Happy Pride, everyone! Like my featured artwork? I’ve been seeing the memes making the rounds commenting about how all of a sudden, everyone’s going to rebrand for Pride month, and it’s true: Corporate optics is a shallow reason to be flashing Pride flags. However, that stuff doesn’t apply to me; I’ve been doing this for a while.
I am seizing on the opportunity presented here by Pride month to write this post, as I do have a lot to answer for that I’ve been trying to dodge; this is, in fact, another one of those “I didn’t know I’d be writing this when I woke up this morning” posts, though I should probably have seen the writing on the wall. And also, in keeping with the running theme of the past several posts of lots of things coming together right about now, I will have to go back quite a ways to hit the real roots of what I am writing today to address.
You have to admit, though, my base branding goes along pretty well with the whole thing, doesn’t it? Lions do run in prides after all (Get it? Dan de Lyons?); besides, Pride is the Deadly Sin associated with the Devil, with whom I’ve been claiming to rub shoulders of late.
Lately, the Forces of Hell have been having quite a moment regarding Pride when far-right activist Lauren Witzke’s lame attempt to demonize Pride backfired on her ass when the LGBTQIA+ community largely embraced the messaging in response. Lady, Satan loves queer people. Educate yourself.
Shades of Dissent
Readers may notice a subtle detail that’s shown up twice already: I’m favoring the traditional Pride flag in my symbolism here. That’s very intentional. I don’t mean any disrespect to any of the communities more specifically featured in more recent iterations of the flag (and there have been many), but they’re unnecessary, and in fact the entire situation with the Pride flag and representation highlights one of the weak points of the political left that, like it or not, will be exploited by the political right at every opportunity because conformity and walking in lockstep is what they do best: This is one of the places where, frankly, the left can’t get their shit together; diversity is well and good, but the tendency toward endless subdivision into identity-based blocs spreads the left thin. Divide et impera! Divide and conquer. That’s all it really takes to head identity politics off. Not that intersectionality isn’t an important perspective, mind you, but it does tend toward siloing, fosters some infighting, and even a perverse kind of “competition” over which identities are more oppressed than others—as if that’s going to solve inequality.
I’ve spent a lot of time searching for the original link where I read this but I couldn’t find it, and I don’t want to misquote anyone, but I am pretty sure it was a comment somewhere that I saw by John Michael Greer observing that the symbolism of the current accepted Pride flag suggests just such a situation, with the triangular bands of the flag literally “driving a wedge” through the original colors of the flag; and while there are 6 colors in the traditional Gay Pride flag and not 7, Greer (a noted occultist) commented that from an esoteric and even semiotic viewpoint, the basic rainbow symbolism of the original Gay Pride flag was plenty sufficient and if you really understood the deeper meaning of the rainbow from that viewpoint, it already covered everyone. People in general just aren’t paying deeper attention to its meaning.
[EDIT 2/6/2025: Showing how little attention I have sometimes paid to the political views of occultists, I was not aware of just how far right Greer leans, and in my citation of the view he expressed, I don’t mean to signal that I condone those views. However, I didn’t make this quote because of who he is, I made the quote because I agree with its general thesis. I still do, after long reflection. However, I can also see how Greer would have been positively motivated by his political and social views to see things that way. There are other ways of viewing the flag, and the community has chosen by consensus to embrace it. I respect that.]
When I established The Theosophical Community, The Theosophical Society in America’s erstwhile official online social network, I created banner artwork colored, much like the featured photo for this post, in a rainbow motif. I had a couple of main reasons for that, stemming from my many conversations with one of my closer friends and teachers during my time working and living there.
This woman was a member of the Esoteric School, or E.S.; I’ve badmouthed the E.S. a lot, but I should make it clear that when I do that, I’m speaking of a largely systemic problem that, at the time, centered mostly around the influence of one person: Radha Burnier, then the International President running the global T.S.-Adyar Branch from India. There were plenty of good people who were also E.S. members. This woman I once knew was one of them, and a fellow Co-Mason, but with a spirit very similar to mine: Her loyalty is to The Great Work first, and where she saw injustice, she couldn’t just turn and look away from it. Even where she was bound from acting, she did what she felt she needed to do, which included letting me in on some things that she was technically held back by oaths not to be talking about with outsiders.
She was never a very popular person, and I can see why. If I’d had better skills with boundaries myself, there are a lot of situations I probably wouldn’t have found myself caught up in; but anyway. She was one of the few people who knew about Ilyas, for example, and we’d talk about all sorts of things. One of her characteristics was that she presented somewhat “masc;” the structure of her face and even parts of her body, some of her body language, etc.; she told me once she knew she came off as “butch” like that, and even presented to me the theory that as a soul reincarnates, obviously needing to experience lifetimes as people of both sexes, she thought personally that maybe we spent a few lifetimes “in-between” like that as we shifted from one polarity to the other, and that that could be one way of explaining transgender people from the esoteric viewpoint; but she told me the E.S. folks wouldn’t want to hear talk like that. The Esoteric School is, as its name suggests, a secretive group, and I have to stress that I’ve never been a member or even applied; however, that’s one of the several things she told me that gave me some insight into what they do and how they think.
No, apparently they had their metaphysical beliefs about sex and gender, and according to her (though she was reluctant to elaborate with details), their take on things was….let’s say, not quite so friendly toward transgender people or, for that matter, LGBQ people (we weren’t including the “TIA+” yet back then). The E.S. took a more…”traditional” tack, she said, and pretty much left it at that. She alluded once or twice to people whose applications had been rejected, though it was never the official reason, over homosexuality. E.S. folks tended to marry off in pairs, I noticed, and my friend alluded sometimes to that being a part of their work that influenced the way they had been handling all the rest.
Earlier today, Mark Stavish shared the article On Magic, Manhood, and Masculism with some insights into that sort of thinking; according to some esoteric traditions, there are metaphysical aspects to sexual polarity in humans which, despite the existence of intersex people, is basically the biological norm. In those schools of thought, as in Theosophy, we are all held to inhabit more than one “body” on multiple spiritual planes at once and, according to some teachings, the genders of our other bodies also polarize the same way our biological bodies do, and we’re generally “supposed” to fit together in that sense like puzzle pieces with our opposite-sexed partners. The article clarifies where a lot of esoteric symbolism is coming from; trans occultists know that traditional gender symbolism isn’t necessarily as black and white as it appears and, as the article explains, we are talking more about abstract principles when we invoke gender in an occult sense; and even that article states that not everyone conforms to the norm, some people have differently-gendered astral bodies, for example, so there is in fact room here for trans folks.
It’s just that some specific schools are much less open to experimenting along these lines, and end up forcing people into standard boxes as a result…which is sad, really.
We both knew people who had ultimately left the T.S. over such concerns.
She, being more progressive and open-minded, never agreed with that kind of nonsense and, as I said, wasn’t above a certain amount of rabble-rousing, though it was rarely overt unless she knew she was covered; she did, after all, live on campus and was pretty dependent on the regime.
My selection of the colors for my banner was an allusion to that whole situation of the E.S.’s, so I’d heard, “prejudiced” stance on these things, yes, but on one other thing: The symbolism of The 7 Rays. This stuff falls into the way Charles Leadbeater appropriated Hindu teachings, but it all goes back, apparently, to Blavatsky as well. I’ve also mentioned some of the weird patterns I had noticed in Theosophical discussion groups, and one of those was that, even though her books were kept on the shelves at Quest bookshops and in the Olcott library, if you tried to talk about Alice Bailey’s work, you got shut down quickly, which seemed weird to an outsider unfamiliar with the simple fact that the Theosophical folks do have a definite “stance” on Bailey and it isn’t generally favorable.
For those who don’t know, Alice A. Bailey founded The Lucis Trust and wrote a shit-ton of highly-recognizable, blue-bound books that, to a casual student, seem pretty close to the shit Blavatsky and her ilk were writing about. Like me, Bailey was a fellow Co-Freemason, which may explain the spirit that she, my teacher above, and I have in common. You see, according to my teacher, there’s a reason Bailey is pooh-poohed in T.S. circles, and it’s because Bailey based all her work on the E.S.’s secret teachings! Yes, Alice Bailey was the “Israel Regardie” of the Theosophical world: She said fuck her oaths, and she published it all. Took it all and ran with it. No wonder she named her Trust after Lucifer! Good girl!
Apparently, Radha Burnier confessed that to my friend in the back of a limo in the ‘70s while being picked up at O’Hare for a visit to the Wheaton Campus, probably for the Dalai Lama’s visit if I remember correctly (when he fled Tibet, he was first received in India by The Theosophical Society).
So my banner was also a nod to that, because Radha had way too much power, and she abused it ruthlessly. She was International President of the Theosophical Society, as well as the head of the Co-Masons and E.S. both. This was problematic because, as I have alluded to more than once, the E.S. holds a lot of power in the T.S. Most of the more influential members in key positions are E.S., for the simple fact that they tend to be the only people who even care enough to put in the work it takes to run a chartered Lodge or Study Center. To E.S. folks, the head of the E.S. is considered to be the “Outer Head” of the very spiritual hierarchy of the very same Masters who led Blavatsky! Yes, Radha was supposedly in touch with, and the person speaking for, the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi. And there was pressure for all E.S. members to fall in line with whatever she said. In fact, near the end of my time there, I remember there was an election for T.S. President, and a fellow E.S. member and Co-Mason, John Algeo, ran as well, in opposition to her. I was privy to the secret letter Radha sent out to all E.S. members, essentially threatening them to vote for her or else. And with the E.S.’s numbers?
That’s why she won.
When I used the symbolism of the Seven Rays in my banner, it was because of all I knew about what was going on…because the Seven Rays, if a real occult phenomenon, belong to everyone, including trans and gay people. An organization like the T.S., with its stated objectives, should be on the more open side; its “Inner Court,” the E.S., should consist not of dogmatists, but of people willing to explore the esoteric and the spiritual along with their LGBTQIA+ seekers, so we can all learn together what works and what doesn’t. Theosophy is supposed to be a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. Gay and transgender people definitely exist, and have more right to consideration than the channeled words of Masters who may or may not have ever even lived!
The Rainbow Flame
There’s one more “elephant in the room” for me to answer for, something I have mentioned on this site at least once (I think it was the introductory post, Flying Blind, in fact, because the event in question went down the day before). It all began just before I started this site and was still running my Facebook Page, Gogo Bordello’s Airship of Fools (my founding of this site coincided with that Chinese balloon being shot down over the U.S., and I “shot down” the page to go along with that, it was fun). It all revolves around a Facebook post I made, which was based on an experience I had involving Rose. I’ll just drop the text of the post here, then explain further:
11:11.
WTF, mate?
I just had a mindblowing experience, but in order to describe and explain it, I need to write a bit of an introduction.
As many modern magicians are aware, there is something of a “Promethean” convention that pops up here and there in magical and mystical practices: Working with colored flames.
For many, the first “color” to which they will be introduced is blue (and I noticed that in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the color of the principle of Wisdom in the Triforce is also blue, and the game includes the blue flame as a mysterious plot device). This will very likely be from instructions on The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram from The Golden Dawn, though I have seen it elsewhere (for example, in the Feri tradition of witchcraft). There are explanations for why this flame is visualized as blue and while we all know my memory is suspect, I do think I dimly recall something about that having to do with its cooling effect on the element of fire, the idea being that we want a slow, steady burn rather than an inferno.
For obvious reasons, then, working with, say, a red flame, might be risky. Pret-ty damn volatile.
I have not seen a “green flame,” though I have worked with “green energy,” and I wonder how different these really are? I feel that, in fact, they are.
When I was much younger, I remember my first introduction to The Violet Flame (supposedly of “The 7th Ray”) being in a book that was supposedly written by a guy channeling an alien named Serapis Bey. Tony Stubbs. The Ascension Handbook. Yeah, that was it. However, I think that idea actually comes from somewhere else, like the Comte de St. Germain.
More recently, a number of years ago, I learned of “The Black Flame” and knew that was—at least for the moment—where I wanted to be. I knew that I needed it for what I am here to do and at the time, it was all I could think about. It had seduced me. Given certain things communicated to me by my Spirit Guides that I have opened up about recently (rhymes with “Squipsissimus”), one might make some reasonable guesses as to what that might mean for me. And so I spent many years burning in this flame, learning its lessons. I could not see the forest for the trees….
...until the Black Flame had done all of its work. And I think that time has come.
Just after making my previous post, I leapt into bed to shed those tears. And soon, Rose was with me, in ways I have never before experienced. She has always “felt” and “sounded” like something outside of myself; sometimes seeming physically farther away from me, say, across the room, and sometimes closer, say, over my left shoulder.
But this time, she...came into me. She...”became” me. She was “in” me, soon flowing through me. And she lit me the hell on fire with The Pink Flame. I can’t describe how it felt. It was not hot, nor was it cold, but some indescribable third thing. It loved me relentlessly and filled me with a burning compassion. But it was not meant to last.
The Pink Flame was a transitional phase for what came next:
The Psychedelic Flame. Rose and I were spinning in a great, fiery whirlwind, as one, blazing light in every color under the rainbow, and burning. Just burning together.
I cannot take credit for this. I have been seeing the signs, and I think others have been leading me to it. And this has been the test:
“Does this guy mean business when he says he really has the ‘Word to end Words?’ He says so now, and speaks the words of cooperation while hiding away from us. What’s his game? We need some satisfaction here, and it needs to be on the astral plane.”
That’s my theory, anyway. And I can, in fact, point you to one of the posts that, in retrospect, led me to this idea. It's written all over the fine forge work over at Artes & Craft!
I don’t know how to describe this in any words other than “the real deal.”
Behold The Psychedelic Flame!
And I included a different version of the picture above, with the altar and the candle. That was posted on February 3rd at 11:11am Chicago time.
For those who don’t know, the Black Flame is associated with the Left Hand Path, by which I mean (in this context) Satanism, Setian work, and other related magic(k)al currents. In a sense, the Black Flame refers to the flame of consciousness that provides human beings with the experience of Selfhood/”isolate intelligence,” or the experience of being an individual “I.”
The Blue Flame is a flame used in certain esoteric schools, including The Golden Dawn.
The rest, honestly, comes from New Age claptrap, as I mentioned; the Violet Flame is connected loosely with co-opted New Age teachings about St. Germain which do, ultimately, have their roots in Theosophical teachings, yes.
The Pink Flame was an actual spiritual experience of mine that did emanate from Rose, although it’s also apparently a thing as well according to this podcast at Insight Timer.
So I was mixing up very different contexts in that post. Which is okay, because I meant to, although some clarification is in order, if for no other reason than to avoid stepping on some toes.
In its connection with Satanism, the Black Flame might have some threatening connotations to LGBTQIA+ people because, frankly, Anton LaVey was more the traditional image of masculinity, was not a person I would have liked to know, and did base his Satanic Bible in part on Ragnar Redbeard’s doctrine of “Might Is Right,” which queer folk nowadays would recognize as basically antithetical to everything we are and do. And it is largely out of recognition of that that I wrote what I did in that post, which also aimed to synthesize the other flames in the opening volleys of magic(k)al workings and statements meant to neutralize the hate in groups like the E.S., as well.
This is spiritual war, like I’ve written about before. And my weapon is love.
Fierce love.
Now, from a more Setian viewpoint, I should stress that the Black Flame is not, by definition, necessarily opposed in any way to such a thing as the Rainbow Flame, and as such, it might be argued by many that no such modification to the concept of the Black Flame is necessary. The Temple of Set has done much to distance itself from LaVey’s extremes, and anyone interested in learning more about that should read The Taboo of Satanism, which, incidentally, will also clarify some other things related to recent writings here. This much is clear to many people who would call themselves “Setian,” and certainly to Temple of Set members, many of whom (I would imagine) might find my ideas amusing at best.
The photo above was taken from one of the initial “Hermekate Workings” a few years back, which I’ll be writing about in more detail. It is connected with several of my recent posts here that involve such matters as making deals with Lucifer, people like Anton LaVey, Aleister Crowley, and their work, and some movements afoot in the realm of Aeonic magic(k)al currents.
A future post will explain the symbolism of the objects shown in the photo, but briefly, there are two tarot cards, one of which was the Chariot, which was included for reasons that will be much clearer to anyone who reads that link; it’s tied very much with the meaning of the Word Hermekate.
The other card is Adjustment, traditionally known as Justice.
Set is not unfriendly to LGBTQIA+ people; it is eminently Setian for people to explore every aspect of our Selfhood so that we may Xeper. On a deeper level, in fact, the “Prince” of Darkness, as illustrated by Set’s animal form, is so “Other” and inherently queer that no one can even agree what animal Set is supposed to be! It does work, in a sense…
…except we still call Set “he.”
Hermes, too, is, in essence, androgynous and is a friend to several gay dudes I know. But we still call Hermes “he,” too. Again and again, supposedly-androgynous figures bow in the end to He-ness.
Hekate has been adopted by many LGBTQIA+ people for Her patronage of marginalized and liminal people; her energy, also, is highly queer; but she, also, is gendered in a polar way. Biologically, this is arguably more accurate since all human embryos are female at first, some of which later develop into males. It’s still inherently gendered, which doesn’t sit well with some people.
We have the figure of Baphomet, introduced by Eliphas Levi, who is inherently androgynous but yet again, is also considered a “he” and also catches some of LaVey’s supremacist “cooties” by association.
Part of the changes that the Word Hermekate bring to the Aeons involve re-balancing that situation, in part by serving as a more explicitly-androgynous figure: Hermekate is a compound deity composed of both male and female genders, with neither one taking precedence.
As one last note, this isn’t all just some arbitrarily-applied “woke” re-branding. My relationship with Hekate as Initiatrix runs deep, and while I appreciate Setian symbolism, She has still been my primary tutelary deity, the one most closely involved in my Initiation. She is a torchbearer and as far as I’m concerned, She is the one who set me ablaze with the Black Flame. This is all based on authentic experience and is quite heartfelt.
The only other question is:
Which Aeon does Hermekate fall under?