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A Key to the ECoD Saints


Our saints are humans for whom there is some evidence of existence, who died, and who, while alive, had developed personal power and a certain charisma in their lives; their messages echo and resonate within us and have gained spiritual power and strength over time. They are our saints because of what they represented in life, but more importantly, for what they have become after death, and because of our ability to tap into their powers and use them for our own spiritual/magical purposes. They function as symbols representing energies, conduits, and portals into particular thoughts and archetypes, which, taken as a whole, create a complete spiritual/magical system. Our saints are to be used and invoked for whatever purposes your imagination can devise--there are neither rules nor limitations.

Here is the key to our Saints as listed in the Trinity Mass:

  • Enḫeduana
  • St. Mary = Mary Magdalene
  • St. Thomas = Thomas Didymus
  • St. Abraham = Abraham Abulafia
  • St. Johannes = John Dee
  • St. Marie = Marie Laveau
  • St. Helen = Helena Blavatsky
  • St. Samuel = Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers
  • St. Gregori = Gregori Rasputin
  • St. Em = Emma Goldman
  • St. Mohandas = Mahatma Gandhi
  • St. Osman = Austin Osman Spare
  • St. Carl = Carl Gustav Jung
  • St. Marilyn = Marilyn Monroe
  • St. John = John Lennon
  • St. Bob = Robert Anton Wilson

Enḫeduana (ca. 2285-2250 b.c.e.). She was the daughter of Šarru-kên (Sargon) King of Akkad who created the world's first empire. She was appointed the EN-priestess of Nanna-Suen (Sumerian Moon god) by her father, but she was also a devout advocate of her family and personal goddess Inana (aka Ištar).

Numerous hymns to Inana are attributed toEnḫeduana and she is considered one of the first known women in history and the world's first known author of any gender. Her name translates as: "high priestess [who is] the abundance of Heaven." In the ECoD tradition her attributes are loyalty and devotion to one's personal gods, spirits, and spiritual path. She intercedes for us before the heavenly court of Inana and she stands at the door connecting us with the powerful egregores of the ancient Sumerian religion. However, she not only represents the Sumerian traditions, but also the later Babylonian, Assyrian, and Ugaritic traditions, and even the later Etruscan, Greek and other pantheistic religions which were later manifestations of that same egregore.

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The Temple Hymns
The Exaltation of Inana
Inninšagura

Mary Magdalene. Although unclear in the scriptures, common tradition has it that Mary Magdalene was the prostitute out of whom Jesus cast 7 demons. This rumor began with Pope Gregory the Great in 591 c.e. Who said "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? .... It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts."

Although the Vatican repudiated that position in 1969, the idea is fixed in common tradition and many writers and movies, including the popular "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" adhere to this view. We also agree with this portrait of Mary as the divine whore of the gods, which is the ultimate source of her power and mystique. Furthermore as "Mary" she spiritually blends the opposing powers of both virgin and harlot (also found in the being of the goddess Inana). Thus for us she is Paradox, the clashing of opposite forces that have not been, and cannot be integrated and must be approached on that level. Thus she represents the doorway to Universe B, the universe of non-being which opposes our universe of existence, Spare's Neither/Neither, whose inner gatekeeper is the infamous Choronzon.

St. Mary is diligent and loving and a mystic of renown. She was the first to be aware of the risen/missing body of Jesus. She was present on Pentecost to receive a "tongue of fire." St. Mary was an Apostle; she was a heavy weight among the chosen. She provides a channel to Sophia and the full richness of the feminine aspect as a primary bi-fraction of the divine essence. From one Qabbalistic Rabbi's point of view, the Divine is beyond gender.

At the cusp of the Divine or at the hand of the Lord--St. Mary is and will remain mysterious if not confounding to the male magician and priest. She bridges the gap between the Abbey and the Cult of Inana much as the Black Madonna provides that conduit for Western African traditions merging with Franco-Iberian Christianity. She is best known for providing Jesus the opportunity to deliver the line. "He among you without sin--let him cast the first stone." Good thing women were not allowed to be present at stonings otherwise Jesus' mom would have let her have a right thumping.

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The Gospel of Mary:

Karen King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, 2003.
Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Mary, 2004.
Christopher Tuckett, The Gospel of Mary, 2007.

Thomas Didymus. Thomas the Twin, the famous Doubting Thomas, the disciple who would not believe until he saw Jesus and examined his wounds. According to the Bible: "...Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe (John 20:24-25)."

Although briefly mentioned in the Bible, he warranted his own Gnostic gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus says: "...Compare me to something and tell me what I am like." Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended." And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you (Gospel of Thomas: 13)."

Thomas Didymus reminds us that without a good healthy dose of skepticism we run the risk of ending up like so many Christians: myopic, illogical, and reeking of the stench of unmitigated faith.

St. Thomas, despite being remembered as a skeptic was also a heavyweight among the chosen. It has been suggested that he was a tax collector prior to meeting Jesus. From the Gospel of Thomas and other texts it seems clear he did not recognize the authority of Peter, considering him a peer. After Pentecost he may well have left for points east, with Mary Magdalene and perhaps with the living Jesus. Noted for practicality and skepticism (from the orthodox) he is revered among Gnostics as among the greatest mystics. He was likely stabbed and killed while preaching in India. He introduces us to paradox and to self awareness--he speaks to us of the complete human. His influence cannot be overstated within the ECoD, note The Abbey of St. Thomas the Doubter. Briefly, he represents the always present "other side of the story." The power of the Divine is illuminated in one man's life , accordingly, enduring triumph of Truth is manifest over censors, editors, prohibitionists, and authoritarians.

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April D. DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 2006.

Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291). Abulafia was born in Saragossa, Spain and experienced the­ traditional Jewish training: Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud. He was also an avid student of philosophy, especially of the Aristotelian philosophy of Moses Maimonides. While still in his teens­, Abulafia began to study the Qabbalah and the Jewish magical books. ­Although he never parted from his Judaism, he reinterpreted it in ­a unique fashion and consequently drew scorn and derision from many of the orthodox factions of that faith and even from many of the more conservative Qabbalists.

At the age of twenty he traveled to Palestine to search for ­the lost ten tribes of Israel. But because of the instability of the region at the time (a result of the crusades), he fled from Palestine to Greece where ­he married and lived for many years. He eventually traveled­ through Italy and returned to Spain. It is believed that he came­ into contact with eastern mystical ideas as well as yogic and­ Sufi meditation techniques during his sojourn in the Middle East­ and Greece--ideas and practices which greatly influenced his­ later thoughts and practices.

Abulafia received his "prophetic call" at the age of 31 and traveled throughout Spain preaching his newly developed methods of spiritual­ attainment. As a result of antagonism from the orthodox Jewish­ leaders, he left Spain in 1274 and carried on a vagabond life,­ mostly in Italy and Greece, teaching his doctrines. He attracted many disciples, but few long-term students. He was much more­ eclectic than most Qabbalists, arguing his points with other­ languages than just Hebrew and engaging in discussions with­ Christian and other mystics; he even set out for Rome in 1280 to ­discuss his system with the anti-semitic Pope Nicholas III, an­ adventure that nearly ended in disaster for the prophet--It was­ only as a result of the fortuitous death of that pope that ­Abulafia escaped Rome with his life.

Abulafia was persecuted by religious leaders throughout his adult life. This situation was often aggravated by himself, ­however--as one writer cogently put it--"Abulafia was­ congenitally disposed to making provocative public statements... (Perle Epstein)." One particularly vehement antagonist was the Rabbi ­Shlomo ben Adret (himself a Qabbalist), who in one tract wrote: ­"There are many frauds whom I have heard and seen. One is the ­disgusting creature, "may the name of the wicked rot,' whose name­ is Abraham [Abulafia]. He proclaimed himself as a prophet and ­messiah in Sicily, and enticed many people with his lies. Through­ the mercy of God, I was able to slam the door in his face. Both­ with my own letters and with those of many congregations. If not ­for this, he would have actually been able to start." In this same vein, the Rabbi Judah Chayit wrote: "...His­ (Abulafia's) books are filled with his own inventions,­ imaginations, and falsehood.... He may have written 'or­ah sekhel (Light of the Intellect) but he actually walks in­ darkness."

To escape these persecutions Abulafia went to Sicily to live­ with a group of his disciples; first he established himself near­ Palermo, but finally settled near Messina. The propaganda war­ against him became so intense, however, that he was finally­ forced to quit Sicily. He fled to the small island of Comino ­(near Malta) in 1288 where he died in about 1292.

Abulafia was a prolific writer: 32 books in manuscript form­ are attributed to him. Yet he invoked the wrath of his ­Qabbalistic colleagues by revealing secrets in plain language for all to read. For this he was condemned by his contemporaries and later Qabbalists, and for this reason even now very few of his­ books have been published let alone translated out of the Hebrew. Even though until ­recently he has been virtually ignored by Qabbalistic writers,­ his works have been mentioned in a positive light by the­ well-known Safed Qabbalist Hayim Vital in his fourth chapter of­ Ša`are Qedušah (a chapter which is usually not included in­ publications of this book because of its advanced nature) and the­ famous Moses Cordovero, in his Pardes Rimmonim (The ­Pomegranate Orchard); yet even these two agree that his­ techniques are advanced and dangerous.

Abulafia's techniques will not be explained here. Let it be said that Abulafia had little interest in ­the traditional speculations of the Sefirot or the ba`ale sefirot ­(Lords of the Sefirot) as he called such Qabbalists as Moses de ­Leon. He was more interested in devekut, usually translated ­as "cleaving (to god)", but descriptions of the event, both in­ Abulafia's writings and in the writings of some of his students ­certainly describe what modern occultists call (using the Hindu term), "samadhi," or what those of Crowley's traditions refer to as the "knowledge and­ conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel."

The Jewish Encyclopedia says: "Abulafia's writings are not wanting in excellent ideas and beautiful illustrations, but these are so overgrown with mystic obscurity and abstruseness that a perusal of them is not very edifying."

In the ECoD Abraham personifies spiritual courage in the face of oppression, mockery and animosity. He stands sentinel at the doors which open into the vast world of the Qabbalah.

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sefer ha-ge'ulah (1273), "The Book of Redemption."
sefer ḥayê ha-nefeš. "The Book of the Spirit."
sefer ha-yašar (1279) "The Book of Righteousness."
sefer sitrê torah (1280) "The Book of the Secrets of the Torah."
ḥayê ha-`olam ha-ba (1280) "The Life of the World to Come."
'or ha-sekhel "The Light of the Intellect."
get ha-šemot "The Divorce of the Names."
mafte’aḥ ha-re'ayon The Key to the Visions."
gan na'ul "The Hidden Garden."
`oṣar 'eden ganuz "The Hidden Treasure of Eden."
sefer ha-ḥešek. "The Book of Darkness."
sefer ha-`ot (1285) "The Book of the Sign."
'imrê šefer (1291) "Words of Beauty."

For further reading see:

Gershom Scholem, "Abraham Abulafia and the Doctrine of Prophetic Kabbalah," Chapter 4 in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1954.
Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, 1992.
Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia--Kabbalist and Prophet, 2000.

John Dee (1527-1609). Dr. John Dee was born in Tower Ward, London and was educated at the Chelmsford Chantry School and at Cambridge. Later he traveled Europe and studied at Leuven, Brussels, and Paris. He became a well-known authority on mathematics, astronomy, cartography, and navigation. Of much more interest to us, however, was his life-long fascination with the occult; studying magic, astrology, divination, and hermetic philosophy. He saw no conflicts between his scientific studies, the occult and his Catholic faith, Indeed, he believed that all these were part of the same grand design.

Because of his great erudition in so many fields, he became the court astrologer and spiritual adviser to both queen Mary and Elizabeth I. His position brought him great wealth and at his house in Mortlake he gathered together the largest library of his time.

However, his interest in the occult often caused him problems with the devout and pious, and on numerous occasions he was accused of witchcraft and censured by the court and the church. In fact, not long before his death, when king James ascended the throne, he lost favor at that very conservative protestant court. His estate at Mortlake was then raided and burned by neighboring peasants out of fears of sorcery and he died a penniless man.

Of the many achievements of Dee, two things interest us here, the writing of the Hieroglyphic Monad and his work with evoking spirits with the aide of Edward Kelly and his creation or discovery of the Enochian system of magic.

In 1564, Dee wrote the Monas Hieroglyphica, a Qabbalistic interpretation of a glyph of his own design, meant to express the mystical unity of all creation (see illustration to the right). He traveled to Hungary and presented a copy of the book to Maximilian II, the Holy Roman Emperor, to whom he had dedicated it. This work was highly valued by many of Dee's contemporaries and is considered one of the sacred texts of the ECoD.

His work with the spirits began in 1580 and he struck up a partnership with Edward Kelly in 1582 who acted as his medium and dictated what the "angels" spoke to him while Dee wrote and asked questions. The outcome of all this was what we call the Enochian magical system, which can be worked today as written by Dee or as part of the Golden Dawn or Aurum Solis traditions. This system is part of the OSO training and for his work we praise John Dee as one of our Saints. His attributes for us to emulate is persistence, the desire for ultimate knowledge and the desire for power through knowledge. He is the doorway to the eerie world of Enochian or Angelic magic.

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Monas Hieroglyphica, 1564.
Preface to Billingsley's Euclid, 1570.
On the Mystical Rule of the Seven Planets, 1582-1583.

Selected Works on the Enochian Magic System

The Enochian Magick of Dr John Dee, by Geoffrey James, 1994.
Enochian Magic for Beginners, by Donald Tyson, 1997.
Enochian Initiation: A Thelemite's Magical Journey into the Ultimate Transcendence, by Frater W.I.T., 2006.
John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, by Deborah Harkness, 2006.
Enochian Vision Magick: An Introduction and Practical Guide to the Magick of Dr John Dee and Edward Kelly, by Lon Milo DuQuette, 2008.
The Lost Art of Enochian Magic: Angels, Invocations, and the Secrets Revealed to Dr. John Dee, by John de Salvo, 2010.
John Dee and Edward Kelley's Great Table (or, What's This Grid For, Anyway?), by Teresa Burns and J. Alan Moore, n.d.
Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture, by Egil Asprem, 2012.

Marie Laveau (1794-1881). Marie Laveau was born a free person in the city of New Orleans; she was a devout Catholic all her life and was a great philanthropist. Moreover, tradition has made her into the most influential Voodoo priestess in America, the Voodoo Queen par excellance; even today her cult is active and powerful and synonymous with "New Orleans Voodoo." She also had a daughter named Marie, and sometimes the two get conflated in legend and tradition.

She represents charity and love for all humanity. She is also our conduit to the Vudu and Hudu currents. These include Haitian vodou in all its varied glory, (including Makaya, Haitian sorcery, and Michael Bertiaux's Gnostic Voudon: le coulouvre noire and the OTOA); Cuban Santeria and Palo Mayombe, and Brazilian Umbanda, Qimbanda, and Candomble, etc., besides, of course, southern American Hoodoo and New Orleans Voodoo.


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Black & White Magic, rpt. 2010.

Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891). Madame Blavatsky was born in Russia into an aristocratic family and enjoyed a well-to-do upbringing and a good education. At the age of 16 she developed an interest in history, theology, and philosophy and began spending much time in her grandmother's library rather than attending balls and other social events.

As a young woman she left Russia and began traveling in the Near and Far East, including Egypt, Greece, India and Tibet, where she was introduced to Hinduism and Buddhism first-hand. She was also interested in spiritualism and she founded a spiritualist society in Cairo, Egypt.

All of her travels and studies eventually led her to co-found the Theosophy Society in 1875 along with Henry Steel Olcott and William Judge. Theosophy is a non-sectarian entity which tries to "reconcile humanities, scientific, philosophical and religious disciplines and practices into a unified worldview." The Theosophy Society is still alive and thriving today.

The breadth and depth of Blavatsky's understanding is impressive and the ECoD is indebted to much of her thought and methodologies. Thus she is our saint, and leads us down the path of the westernized understandings of Eastern religions: Hinduism and Buddhism. The great Carl Jung himself referred to Theosophy as "gnosticism in a Hindu garb."

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Isis Unveiled, 1877.
The Secret Doctrine, 1888.
The Voice of the Silence, 1889.
The Key to Theosophy, 1889.

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918). Mathers was born in London, his father died when he was a young boy; as a young man he worked as a clerk. He married Mina Bergson, who was the sister of the philosopher Henri Bergson. He became a freemason in 1877, and was raised to master mason in 1878. In 1882 he resigned from freemasonry and joined the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. He quickly rose to higher degrees in the SRIA, but was forced to leave in 1903 for not repaying a monetary loan.

When William Robert Woodman died, Mathers took over the lead of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, for which he is mainly known. After the great schism in 1900, Mathers formed a group known as Alpha et Omega. Mathers died in 1918, but the cause of his death is not mentioned on his death certificate. Our only indication comes from Dion Fortune, who says he died from the Spanish Flu.

Mathers led an unusual and rather eccentric lifestyle for his era, he was a vegetarian (perhaps a vegan), non-smoker, and anti-vivisectionist. He never had an actual occupation, he lived mainly off of patrons and loans. His two passions were magic and the history of warfare. He also claimed Highland Scottish heritage, thus he added "McGregor" to his name, but there seems to be little evidence of that in his actual genealogy.

He studied many languages: French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Gaelic, and Coptic, but he certainly was not fluent in most of them. The famous Irish poet, William Butler Yeats (who knew Mathers from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), had this to say about him: "He was a man of great learning but little scholarship." Nevertheless his flawed translations gave a wider awareness and circulation of a number of obscure texts to the general occultist, and perhaps his most interesting legacy was his codification of the Enochian magical system.

Mathers certainly lived in the shadow of more outspoken and well-known occult personalities such as Dion Fortune and especially Aleister Crowley, yet much of the foundations of Fortune's and Crowley's occultism came from the studies and teachings of Mathers. Thus we leave Crowley and Fortune to speak for themselves and embrace Mathers as our symbol, our window into this fascinating and creative era of occult synthesis.

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The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, 1900.
The Lesser Key of Solomon, 1904.
The Kabbalah Unveiled, 1912.

Gregori Rasputin (1869-1916). Gregori was born in Siberia and little is known of his childhood. Supposedly he entered a monastery at the age of 18, and spent 3 months there, possibly as a penance for theft. After that experience he had a vision of the Virgin Mary, which turned him towards the life of a nomadic mystic.

It seems that he was affiliated at one point with the khlysty, an ecstatic Christian sect whose lively rituals, it is rumored, often turned into sexual orgies and flagellations. In any case, apocryphal stories abound around Rasputin, his healing abilities, his mysticism, his lifestyle, and we will not go into them here. It is also well-known that he was able to convince the Tsarina that he could cure her son, and was then able to ingratiate himself into the Russian court. He drank and fornicated and became quite a scandal and finally the nobles of Russia had him killed. Even his killing was an interesting story--apparently he refused to die: drank poisoned wine and was unharmed, endured numerous bullet wounds and still lived, and finally had to be drowned.

Rasputin had a power, whether for good or ill depends on your point-of-view (he was often called the "mad monk" or the "black monk"), but no one can deny his charisma. Much can be read about his life, much of it conflicting, but that doesn't matter, we won't re-hash it all here, because he has become larger than life and that is our interest in his legacy. Nine months after his murder in 1916 the first movie about him came out. There have been at least 11 movies about this curious man and many references in songs.

Rasputin represents for us debauchery, lust of power, the divine uses of sex and drunkiness. In the ECoD he is our doorway into spiritual sexuality and the magics of lust--including that of Crowley, Bertiaux, Randolph, and others.

Emma Goldman (1869-1940). Emma was born in Lithuania and migrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City. After the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, she became involved in the growing anarchy movement and was well-known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She had a life-long relationship with Alexander Berkman and in her early days was a proponent of the "propaganda of the deed." Because of her outspoken nature she was often jailed and was finally deported back to Russia in 1917, just in time for the Bolshevik revolution. At first she supported that movement, but became disillusioned when Lenin and the Bosheviks violently repressed those who disagreed with them. She left Russia and lived in England, France, Spain and Canada, where she died in 1940.

She often wrote and spoke on the state of the prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. During her lifetime she was considered a "rebel woman," and was called "The most dangerous woman in America." She is the only confirmed atheist among the ECoD saints--all the others believed in something or were at least ambiguous in their faith. For us she represents freedom and politics in all of its myriad forms, and underscores the ECoD's own political leanings--since we build our church on a firm base of personal freedom, we consider anarchy to be the best, and possibly only approach to the socio-political nature of the world.

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Anarchism and Other Essays, 1910.
The Philosophy of Atheism, 1916.
Living My Life, 1931.

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948). Mahatma Gandhi is very well-known and little needs to be said of him. He was born and raised in the Hindu merchant caste in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London. Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience when he was a lawyer in South Africa, in the Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. He assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921 and led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all else trying to achieve self-rule.

He opposed British rule in India, but always advocated nonviolence and truth as the means of protest. He lived simply, was a vegetarian, wore traditional Indian clothes, and fasted often--both as a means of self-purification and protest. He we jailed many times for his protests and eventually Britain granted independence to India in 1947, partially as a result of his work. He was assassinated by a Hindu Nationalist in 1948.

Gandhi is for the ECoD a Mahatma, a great soul, a teacher, and an adept. St. Mohandas without question meets the Theosophical definition of "mahatma." (Wiki plagiarism: "Helena Blavatsky, (St. Helen), claimed that her teachers were adepts--or Mahatmas--who reside in Asia. According to the Theosophical teachings, the Mahatmas are not disembodied beings, but highly evolved people involved in overseeing the spiritual growth of individuals and the development of civilizations.")

St. Mohandas represents earned leadership and integrity, a king among kings much like the Emperor card in the Tarot, ironic perhaps, but true. His vision, his accomplishments, and his lasting legacy reach well beyond mere politics. St. Mohandas changed the world. He may one day be thought a great prophet, guiding us along the path to an enhanced existence for humanity.

Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956). Austin Spare was born into a working-class family in Snow Hill in London, growing up in Smithfield and then Kennington. Early in his life he took an interest in art. He Gained a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, where he trained as a draughtsman.

As a young man he was interested in Theosophy and the wider Western Esoteric Tradition. As a teenager he was initiated into a witchcraft tradition by an older lady whom he calls Mrs. Patterson and went on to Develop his own personal occult philosophy and methods. Later he become briefly involved with Aleister Crowley and his A∴A∴, but after about a year he had a falling out with Crowley and left Thelema behind.

Spare represents Art as magic and magic as art; sexual perversion and weird sex as windows into spiritual realms; he is the doorway to the chthonic traditions: autavistic sorceries, Lovecraftian dream quests, and sexual wicca, to name a few. His importance in this regard is obvious from the fact that the ECoD's Order of Saint Osman is named after him.

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Earth Inferno, 1905.
The Book of Satyrs, 1907.
The Book of Pleasure, 1913.
The Focus of Life, 1921.
The Anathema of Zos, 1927.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). The Old Wizard of Küsnacht needs little or no introduction, he is one of the more famous of our saints. His father was a protestant minister and his mother was a melancholy and rather odd daughter of a Hebrew professor. Jung studied medicine at the University of Basel, was drafted as an army doctor in World War I, was a colleague of Freud, became a world-renowned psychiatrist, married a wealthy woman, and had numerous extra-marital affairs. He also had a life-long interest in religion, mysticism, and the occult. Our focus is on his mystical and religious writings rather than his vast psychological corpus. His influence on the ECoD cannot be overstated. He lies at the foundation of almost all of our beliefs and his small essay: The Seven Sermons to the Dead is one of our two sacred canonical books.

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Collected Works, Bollingen Series XX. Trans. by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uiversity Press.
  • Symbols of Transformation, vol. 5, 1967.
  • Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, vol. 8, 2010.
  • Aion, vol. 9ii, 1970.
  • Answers to Job, vol. 11,
  • Psychology and Religion: West and East, vol. 11, 1969.
  • Psychology and Alchemy, vol. 12, 1968.
  • Alchemical Studies, vol. 13, 1967.
  • Mysterium Coniunctionis, vol. 14, 1970
  • The Symbolic Life, vol. 18, 1976.
The Red Book (Liber Novus), ed. by Sonu Shamdasani, et al. 2009.
Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, James Dougherty1962.

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). Marilyn was born Norma Jeane Mortenson (later changed to Baker) in Los Angeles. She never knew her father and her mother was mentally unstable, resulting in her spending much of her childhood in foster care. She began work as a model in 1945 which led to film opportunities and the rest is, as they say, history.

She was married three times, first to James Dougherty, and then, most notably to the famous baseball player Joe DiMaggio and the playwright Arthur Miller. She had a few extra-marital affairs and later in her career she had personal and mental issues which led to her reputation as being unreliable and hard to work with--she spent much of her adult life in psychotherapy with a host of different doctors and therapists. Her death is infamous--an overdose of barbituates--which is tentatively considered a suicide, but has spawned much controversy in conspiracy-theory circles.

Marilyn is one of the most famous of our saints, and certainly the most glamorous. She represents femininity, both its strengths and its weakness, and its huge influence over the popular mind, in both negative and positive aspects. There is no doubt that Marilyn was an intelligent, nice girl manipulated by the entertainment industry; who cares whether she killed herself or was killed by other forces, all that is irrelevant. Just look at her now, at the sexual powers she possesses after death--she is often called a goddess and if you doubt the rise and extent of her sexual energies, watch the church scene in Ken Russell's “Tommy.”

Quotes

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

"If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere."

"What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers."

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul."

"We should all start to live before we get too old."

"It's all make believe, isn't it?"

"I've been on a calendar but never been on time."

"We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves."

"Arthur Miller would have never married me if all I had been was a dumb blond."

"The "public" scares me, but people I trust."

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."

"I learned to walk as a baby and I haven't had a lesson since."

"Imperfection is Beauty, madness is genius, and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

"I think cheesecake helps call attention to you, then you can follow through and prove yourself."

"In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are."

Select Filmography

Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, 1953.
The Seven Year Itch, 1955.
Bus Stop, 1956.
Some Like It Hot, 1959.

John Lennon (1940-1980). He was born and raised in Liverpool, England and was a member of the famous Beatles and after the breakup of the Beatles he enjoyed a strong solo career (I mention this just in case the reader has been living on Mars the past 50 years!). He vies with Marilyn Monroe as the most most famous of our saints in popular culture. His marriage and partnership with the Japanese artist Yoko Ono is well-known as is his death in 1980 from gunshot wounds in the back by a "fan."

He is another saint whose influence on the ECoD cannot be overstated. He represents “sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll” in general, but most importantly he symbolizes the old hippie ideals of peace, love, and happiness. I will end this section with the lyrics to one of his greatest songs, Imagine, for the reader to ponder and understand:

imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try
no hell below us, above us only sky

imagine all the people, living for today

imagine there's no country, it isn't hard to do
nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too

imagine all the people, living life in peace

you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one

imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can
no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man

imagine all the people, sharing all the world

you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one

To fully understand Saint John, one must listen to his music, so rather than a bibliography I have selected a few of his most meaningful songs. Just listen to them, it will instantly become obvious why he is one of our saints.

"I'm Only Sleeping"

"Tomorrow Never Knows"

"Across the Universe"

"Strawberry Fields Forever"

"Because"

"The Ballad of John and Yoko"

"Imagine"

"Give Peace a Chance"

"Working Class Hero"

"Mind Games"

"Watching the Wheels Go Round"

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007). Robert Anton Wilson was born Robert Edward Wilson in 1932 in New York. Robert Anton WilsonHe went to Catholic grammar school and then to the Brooklyn Technical High School to get away from the Catholics. He studied Engineering and Mathematics at New York University, and in 1979 received a PhD in Psychology from the now defunct and unaccredited institution of Paideia University in California. During his life he had such mundane jobs as engineering aide, salesman, copywriter, ambulance driver and associate editor of Playboy. He married Arlen Riley in 1958, had 4 children, the youngest of which, Luna, was murdered in 1976. His wife died in 1999 following a series of strokes. Wilson suffered from Polio all his life and died in California in 2007 at the age of 74.

Wilson has been called at various times novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic. His writings range from scientific to Psychological to political, to fiction, to mystical, to autobiographical, to humorous, to paranoid, to linguistic, to economic, and to just about everything in between. He describes his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth," his goal being "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."

Robert Anton Wilson 1977

Wilson had a close relationship with the Church of the Subgenius and Discordianism. In the ECoD he is honored for all of his achievements and represents the importance of the psychedelic world and the need for humor in this strange universe.

To understand completely the many things Pope Bob is trying to teach us, one must read him, so I will end this section with a Robert Anton Wilson quote and a select bibliography.

"Is," "is." "is"—the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is;" I only know how it seems to me at this moment."
Select Bibliography

The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) (with Robert Shea)
Cosmic Trigger Trilogy
  • Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977)
  • Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth (1992)
  • Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death (1995)
The Game of Life (1979) (with Timothy Leary)
Prometheus Rising (1983)
The New Inquisition (1986)
Neuropolitique (1988) (with Timothy Leary & George Koopman) revision of Neuropolitics
Ishtar Rising (1989) revision of The Book of the Breast
Quantum Psychology (1990)

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