The following article has been discussed a lot in the last days by most of the occultists in my Facebook-Friendlist.
So, I decided to discuss it from my point of view, too, as Nick Farrell (the author) delves into a lot of problems, very unique anglophone to anglophone magic.
First I want to make clear, that I don´t know Nick personally, so all I write is about this single article:
His point of view grounds in a very strong connection to the Golden Dawn-magic system and the bias, that this is somehow „The Western Magical Tradition“. Actually – as I have repeated several times – this is not the case. In fact it is the system of a single magical order, that existed for a very short time. It only became prominant through one of his members: Aleister Crowley. Aside from that, there is very little what makes this order especially important or unique…
Thus, the secrecy of discreet societies seems to be one of his main dogmas in magical schooling. Consequently he condemns the Internet as superficial – well, he is right: it is! But the fact, that many occult information is superficial didn´t changed in the last 30 years – just the medium of superficial information changed. In IIH Bardon wrote exactly about this problem, that there are only a few pearls to find in whole pillars of book, that seeker has to wade through – thus he designed IIH.
It is up to the student so DO the work. And this fact didn´t change with the advent of the Internet. It simply becomes more obvious, that there is a whole bunch of people who are big into reading, big into talking and small on actually walking the PATH.
For what Nick believes to be „true“ his critism fits – for us, who are not limited in our believes about any true system of magic, most of the stuff Nick describes is nothing to lamented about, but while it might be there, it is only another challenge to overcome – and for all its Traditions history, meeting challenges is what every Hermetic does best!