I also work really well with other people and I kind of crave social interaction with people I can relate to over seriously esoteric matters. Ceremonial magic is very much like an extra nerdy drama club with horny wizards and chanting but it very much requires a lodge. There’s pageantry, costuming, roles to play, etc. The only problem is that ceremonial magic is really hard to do when you’re the on your own. I had a sponsor, I had Lovecraft bona fides, and I was told that initiation was mine to take if I wanted it. I’m honestly not sure what happened but it sounds like they’ve been radio silent and not terribly active since 2012. You cease to be the Esoteric Order of Dagon.Ī bit of email went back and forth between myself and the current Grand Master of the EOD who informed me that after a long period of silence the order was coming back to life. If you consign yourself to the Typhonian current you’re no longer working in the Lovecraftian current. As it turns out, this order and that order were once the same order but because it really do be like that, they fell out along a line where one group of magicians wanted to take the whole thing in a Typhonian direction while the others wanted to keep it very much their own thing. I’d later find out that I was looking at the wrong Esoteric Order of Dagon, which made me wonder how many there were and if there was also a Church of Starry Wisdom out there. My eyes bugged out at this list of alumni. Their order included the likes of Phil Hine, Coil’s John Balance, and Nema. But when this particular friend, who I hold in great esteem, copped to belonging to this order, I dropped everything and looked them up and couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies are great reading but it’s all theory and no practice and the other stuff is just your typical cynical cash-grab aimed at edgy teenagers. So I tend to approach anything with a hint of this current with suspicion. On the other hand, you have stuff like the Simonomicon which I’ve always thought of as a novelty or your typical grimoire by some clown in guyliner promising you the power of Cthulhu with these simple rituals. On the one hand, I’ve long been fascinated by Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian current but that’s really only tangentially Lovecraftian. It came as no surprise to me that there were magicians working in a Lovecraft current I’ve just never been sure of how to approach that stuff. Dagon from RJ Ivankovic’s children’s book of the same nameĮvery now and then even I’m weirded out by this shit.Īfter publishing that 4-part Hellier/Lovecraft series a good friend of mine casually remarked in an email, “Did I ever tell you that I’m a member of the Esoteric Order of Dagon?” to which I replied, “ You must tell me everything right this minute, mister! ”

Rj ivankovic