Re: Kate & Lily-Vol 2

[Richard Bensam <rabensam@earthlink.net>]

Richard A. Creighton wrote:

>The speculation that Lily is a member of some Order has been forwarded by
>many,
>and I believe that the lyrics, tone, and pulse of the song make this quite
>obvious. To which Order Lily belongs is the only unanswered question in my
>mind.
>The most probable candidates (IMHO) would be the Golden Dawn, the
>A.'.A.'., the
>Theosophists, or perhaps the followers of Annie Bessant. These groups are all
>currently active in the U.K., and they all use the LBRP, in one form or
>another.

This is a question I would very much like answered, if only for the sake of
making the dictionary more accurate.  I know there are lines of
communication for an interested person to find out stuff like that; occult
newsletters and such.  (I once knew a Gardnerian priestess -- her coven was
traceable back to old Gerald himself -- who was a fairly big wheel in COG,
if you'll pardon the pun, who did a "tour" of the UK, staying in the homes
of various fellow practitioners of the craft.)  Surely you can ask around...

>(Even if Lily is a fictional character, it is entirely plausible that KaTe
>has
>set up Lily's "character profile" to reflect this situation...)

Lily is not a fictional character.  She has been described -- by Del, who
ought to know! -- as a "healer" who Kate has consulted at some point.  Her
voice opens the song which is about her and named after her, and she plays
herself in THE LINE THE CROSS AND THE CURVE, looking every inch my vision
of the modern English witch.  :-)

(If I may digress, one of the things I admire about Kate -- as a person,
wholly apart from her musical career -- is her good relationships with
older people: Lily, Lindsey Kemp, Michael Powell, Larry Adler, and many
others.  She does not show any taint of being exclusively "youth" oriented,
which is a very common failing these days.  In a healthy society we would
value age and experience more than we do, and not assume that creativity
and innovation are restricted to the young, and I suspect Kate holds this
very healthy and atypical attitude.  But then, perhaps I'm just projecting
my own values onto her, which is precisely what I've faulted other people
for doing!)

>As for the theory that Lily herself intentionally changed the wording for the
>LBRP when she taught it to KaTe, I would find that rather impausible, even
>considering the concerns that an occultist might have about recording and
>distributing such a ritual. The LBRP is a protective ritual, intended to
>banish
>negative forces from the user's immediate proximity (temporal and
>spiritual). As
>someone who whas spent over 15 years researching, working with, and creating
>Magickal techniques, I can not imagine any negative repercussions that would
>result from the widespread implementation of the LBRP by the general public.
>However, there might be some sort of organizational or pedagogical reason to
>restrict the dissemination of the "real" version of such a ritual. Also, the
>LBRP is so widely available in print, books, and on the Web, that it is no
>longer considered a "secret" ritual, so concerns about preserving it's
>secrecy
>(at least for the last 20 years!) are spurious at best...
>
>As for the idea that KaTe liked the  LBRP so much she wanted to use it in a
>song, BUT modified the structure of a centuries (if not millenia...)-old
>ritual
>without regard to the spiritual, Magickal, liturgical, and theoretical
>implications, that idea is well outside of my understanding of KaTe. I would
>like to believe that KaTe would respect another's belief enought to
>represent it
>accurately in a song. I cannot (and will not) believe that KaTe would so
>modify
>the LBRP with no better reason than to fit her artistic whim...

Now, Richard, you make it sound as if we're disagreeing about this, but it
seems to me we aren't.  I don't know whether or not Lily "taught" Kate
anything, but I was speculating that *Lily* might have suggested an altered
ritual for the purposes of the song.  You yourself suggested reasons why a
practitioner might wish to alter such a ritual, and in fact it was your
suggestions, and your suggestions alone, that led me to suppose the
alteration might be not an accident of memory but a deliberate change.  I
have EXPRESSLY said that I doubted Kate would misrepresent someone's
religious beliefs for the sake of a song.


RAB