Pat Zalewski’s books on the Golden Dawn are always worth getting and reading. Lately, he has not written that many, preferring to focus on this correspondence course, so his new one is a rarity. I was going to write a review of it, and Pat asked me to “let him have it” so here goes.
Godforms of the Golden Dawn tradition is very much a Pat Zalewski book with similarities to his classic Golden Dawn Rituals and Commentaries. When I read Golden Dawn Rituals and Commentaries (in the 90s) his descriptions of the use of Godforms provided me with a link between the inner work which I was doing and the Golden Dawn.
This book looks at Zalewski’s approach to Godforms which are mostly based on the holographic theory and Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields. That approach has a lot to offer, and Pat clearly explains them in the context of Godforms.
Like most Zalewski books Godforms of the Golden Dawn does not have to be taken in its entirety. There are stand-alone packages of information which unlock chunks of Golden Dawn information. For example, Pat’s explanation of the godforms of the Enochian Chess pieces in the GD ritual is well worth it.
Pat also provides some of the Godforms of the elemental grades as used in Whare Ra with original pictures provided to him by Tony Fuller. Dion Fortune said that illustrations like this were often the real hidden teaching behind a magic order and were often the key to connecting to the original order. Certainly, there are rather a lot of Golden Dawn orders which do not use these godforms and yet claim to be linked to the Stella Matutina or Whare Ra.
Zalewski does not like the more modern approach of officers adopting individual godforms and prefers that the Hierophant generates all of them. He says that this is because the hierophant needs to be in control of the ritual. I do a half-way house with the godforms being created by the officers but ensouled by the Hierophant who links them into the ritual’s network and contacts. This takes a lot of the pressure off the Hierophant without losing much in the way of control.
One thing I would have liked the book to contain was more ritual use outside the grade rituals and perhaps some proper techniques for ordinary rituals. The book is quite short and could easily have been expanded in this direction.
My one problem with the book is the excessive number of introductions. There is an excellent introduction from Tony Fuller which explains the work of Pat, and he did research the Whare Ra and Golden Dawn godforms. However, there then follows two largely pointless introductions from the publisher Lenny Pedersen and Martin Thibeault which did not need to be there and said very little. When you have a book which is only 143 pages long wasting 14 pages before getting to the subject is a little annoying and did not need to be there.
Pat and Tony Fuller have some more books which are coming out using this publisher which, like this book, will be a welcome addition to the evolving corpus of Golden Dawn material. You can get your hands on Pat’s book here.
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