On Christmas night December 25th, 2014 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke

Runyon will present a special program in which Frater Thabion, your host

and the founder of the Order of the Temple of Astarte, will trace the

books and films that influenced and inspired him to create and develop

his unique American system of Magick. I grew out of the Oz books and

graduated to the Mars books (John Carter) then into a teenage

fascination with Richard Shaver's hi-tech Lemurian survivor stories. I

will go to my 1950s early college days watching films such as Jean

Cocteau's Orpheus, and Orson Welles Black Magic (on Cagliostro and

Mesmer) and move on through to a study of Voodoo in line with my

Caribbean adventurer-fiction writer persona. The Saragossa Manuscript

for Kabbalah and mirror magick, Graves The White Goddess. Then my

illness which I tried to cure with self-hypnosis. This led to a serious

study of hypnosis along with Tibetan Tantra (Evans-Wentz) and finally

Western Magick. Mastering the Goetia with the mirror method led to

Jungian psycho-philosophy and the study of anthropology culminating in a

Master's Degree in the subject from California State University. During

this program I created the modern Hermetically oriented Neo-Canaanite

Seasonal ceremonies for our magical order The Temple of Astarte, The

main purpose of our Goetia was to bring up and reestablish the Secret

Goddess of old King Solomon himself. We use the 1770 Hermetic-Masonic rite of Crata Repoa as a structure for our system and I will discuss the sources behind this. Perhaps some of these books and teachings will help others to understand our perspective on the Western Tradition and what we expect to

accomplish by what we call The Great Work.