Respected British Goetic magician Jake Stratton-Kent has blasted what he calls the tendency for ritual magicians to form masonic-style groups. In his Yahoo group, the author of Geosophia  said there were many reasons he found the ‘Masonic’ model a dead loss in the many areas of modern magic where it applies. Masonry was good as a cover for free thinkers in an age when – for example – non-attendance at Anglican church was an imprisonable offence in England. “That time is over. The whole Secret Society model is not only unhelpful but actively counter-productive. It is the principal reason so much energy is expended fighting tiny little wars between factions (between witch groups, between rival Golden Dawns, between thelemic groups, etc),” he said. He believes energy could be better spent incorporating the fundamental advances in recovering our tradition made possible by non-secretive sources like academia. Stratton-Kent said that one reason parts of the grimoire community are advanci...