Influences: The Golden Dawn

Contrary to the popular idea that the Ra material was new and original, the Ra material was heavily shaped by the beliefs of Don Elkins, Carla Rueckert, and (to a lesser extent) Jim McCarty, the three members of the channeling group.

Here we examine the influence of the Golden Dawn, an organization born of Freemason and Rosicrucian founders in the late 1800s to practice “magic.”

Banishing Ritual of the Lesser Pentagram

From the third Ra channeling session onwards, Don, Jim, and Carla opened and closed each session with precisely placed symbolic objects, movements, recitations, and affirmations in a ritual closely derived from the Golden Dawn’s Banishing Ritual of the Lesser Pentagram.

L/L Research called the symbolic objects “appurtenances,” called the movements “walking The Circle of One,” and retained the Golden Dawn’s jargon of “vibrating” a word or phrase. Choice words of the Golden Dawn practitioner included “Ve-Geburah, Ve-Gedulah, Adonai, Malkuth,” words which were adopted, also, by the L/L Research group. Another favorite phrase shared by the Golden Dawn and the L/L trio: “Yod-Heh-Vah-Heh.” Jim explained that part of the ritual s follows:

Then you charge the pentagram by a sharp stabbing motion through the middle of the pentagram as you vibrate “Yod-Heh-Shin-Vah-Heh.” [Don, Carla, and I added the “Shin” during the Ra contact. You won’t see that anywhere else.]

Additional examples abound. The L/L Research rituals, including the “Ritual of Fire” withheld from the publicly released Ra material, are derived from the Golden Dawn’s “Invoking Pentagram Ritual of Fire.” The film script written by Carla and Don featured a lead character modeled after a Golden Dawn priest. The examples go on and on.

The Altar, the Garb, and the Appurtenances

According to L/L Research documentation, Don, Carla, and Jim began scheduled channeling days with breakfast and meditation, and “would then retire to the Ra room and situate Carla on the bed in the middle of the room.” The “appurtanences” were placed next to Carla’s head. The table below compares facets of the Golden Dawn ritual and L/L Research’s derivation:

Protect/Endanger

In the belief system of practitioners of the Golden Dawn and to Don, Carla, and Jim, the ritual held magical power to banish or expel undesirable energies, hence L/L Research’s description of the practice as “a ritual of protection.” When the ritual was first spoken of in the second session, Carla-Ra states of the room’s undesirable energies that “The vibrations may well be purified by a simple turning to the Circle of One and the verbal vibration” of a series of question and answer recitations that concludes with Carla in trance and Don and Jim together stating:

Rejoice then, and purify this place in the Law of One. Let no thought-form enter the circle we have walked about this instrument, for the Law is One. 2.6

Compare this to the Golden Dawn belief that the ritual was a protection against “unknowingly attract[ing] of all manner of elementals and low levels of astral energies.”

Rituals have no innate power. They can be seen and experienced as containing power only to the extent that the person who believes in the ritual ascribes what is and can only ever be their own power to the ritual. Our beliefs create our reality, and each mental distortion creates a shadow: a belief in protection is necessarily also a belief in endangerment. If we believe that meticulously aligned instruments and a perfectly walked circle can protect us from evil spirits, we then also experience ourselves as vulnerable to a misalignment or a fumbled step — as can be seen throughout the Ra material. 3.1–5 12.33 21.29 78.1–2 91.8

The power and the responsibility was in Don, Carla, and Jim’s hands all along, while they believed that they were being protected and while they viewed themselves as endangered or as victims. Theirs was the free will to pretend that their own power and responsibility resided in an external source. The same is true for each of us. You are the Creator.