Robert Zink, who managed to keep the group's name, has been laying low since he was awarded the Order of the Golden Boot by his own order three years ago.
In the 1990s Zink’s Order of the Morning Star was more akin to a money-making sex cult which used the Regardie version of the Golden Dawn as a wrapper.
It was incredibly successful drawing in large numbers to quite well-equipped temples. For those who could not get to one of its temples, Zink devised a method of Astral Initiation. This involved handing over cash for an initiation and then a ritual would be performed in your absence, possibly.
Zink managed to recruit some highly technical people into his group and they staged online wars between his sock puppets and those of the other “sole trading” Golden Dawn business run by David Griffin.
Griffin managed to get the upper hand by attempting to trademark the name Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, only to be beaten to the punch by Chic Cicero. While those two battled it out in court, Zink kept a low profile, even while he benefited from the fact that Cicero’s action prevented him being sued by Griffin.
An even bigger scandal erupted when Zink left his wife for the daughter of one of his students Raphaela, who was pregnant with his child. Various attempts were made to post Raphaela’s birth certificate online to prove that she was underage at the time of their child’s conception.
Curiously after that incident, Zink appeared to calm down considerably. He became a married man and his Second Order became less cultish and more Roman Catholic. There were even attempts to rehabilitate his group within the wider GD community. In fact the only thing that was a little odd was that money appeared to disappear when it was in his presence.
One example was the case of the Cicero Fighting Fund. Zink raised thousands of dollars through his temples to help Cicero in his long running legal battle with Griffin. Certainly his members remembered giving him the money. However, Cicero never received any of it.
Zink never really was that successful in the UK. He never managed to find enough British people who would set up a temple for him and his workshops received poor reviews. But then again, British people viewed his hard sales techniques with some suspicion.
However Zink’s operation collapsed soon after his marriage with Raphaela ended. His order, which was now starting to contain some fairly good people were starting to wonder why on earth they needed him. Some group leaders felt that associating with him was getting them nowhere, while others felt the cash should be going to them.
Some of the groups merged into other Golden Dawn Orders, others just collapsed completely. Some of those which remained operating continued his astral initiation system and continued more or less with the same methods.
Zink was attempting to make a living running courses based around The Secret and his own Ruach Healing courses. The Ruach healing was supposed to be Zink’s answer to Reiki. It was essentially Israel Regardie’s Middle Pillar, but repackaged with the idea of running graded courses, like the New Age Reiki programme.
Now it seems that Zink is remembering his glory days and trying to “get the band back together.” Old members are being contacted and set up temples within the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn again.
According to his Facebook advert, he appears to be targeting those members who fell away, or are dissatisfied with the spin off orders that replaced him.
In at least two cases he has offered those who have lower grades in the spin off orders, adept grades if they set up groups for him.
This is a standard Golden Dawn trick. If you want your order to have a temple in a particular town, find someone with a little experience and then offer them a Second Order grade so that they don’t have to do the Outer Order work. The new adept is motivated but completely untrained in the system.
So far it is a moot point if Zink has been successful. There were rumours of a temple starting up in Toronto, but since occult bookshops in that town have not suddenly found all their stock with “Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn” bookmarks we are not putting much stock in that.
If anyone has heard anything, feel free to post in the comments. BTW, we will be watching for libel on these posts as we really are expecting to see Griffin and Zink to be at each other’s throats trying to attract attention again.
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