Very good question, but with no simple answer.
When dealing with all things occult one can say there are two types of "secrets." One of them is simply not relaying information. Book T, for example, used to be a secret book not available to the general public. It contains the complete Golden Dawn "key" to the Tarot. Until Crowley himself published it, that is. Many other things including specific secret rituals are today not secret at all and can be found quite easily in available literature. But very often simple intellectual information won't help you.
Another type of secret occultists deal with is the type that deals with experience and initiation and those are the ones that are far more difficult to communicate. If someone has not gone through the process and training they simply don't have the tools to deal with the ideas as an initiate would. Even if one knows the rituals they don't give the whole picture.
And even reading or knowing the ritual is not the same as experiencing it. And even experiencing it , I would recommend people experience it as an initiate, as an officer and as an initiator ... that gives one a pretty good look in to it. How can I explain to you by talking or writing what a mango tastes like ? Nah, ya gotta take a bit to really know.
Even so, some can go through them as an initiate and seem to miss the whole point ! That's life I suppose ?
But even to attain, the rite isn't everything, it has to be experienced and lived and understood in context of one's own 'life dynamic' .
For example, the thing with the pelican. One can know the general theme of self sacrifice that the symbol conveys, but actually understanding it, assimilating it and experiencing it is quite another thing.
And that is just one side of it ( in joke
) .... or one aspect of it. There are documents which explain the other aspects, duties, etc.
One can take comfort in the fact that the grades Crowley refers to are so high that it is not only the "unwashed masses" who cannot completely appreciate the symbolism, but also most members of the orders themselves.
I am not sure about that, one would have to check current trends and see the numbers in each degree. But 5 is considered the 'general stopping place' . Beyond there , its a higher level of dedication ... and getting involved with the
'horrible dark side of the Order ' !
( I mean admin , bureaucracy , AGM's , getting people to behave themselves ....
)
..... such and such a sexual act is part of attaining such and such a grade .....
It is ? Damn! I missed that bit
I can guess that the pelican deals with sex in some way and given time I can probably find some sources to support this,
It doesnt .
but it won't confer upon me any grade.
The ceremony would confer a degree, the V. Then you a member of the 2nd Grade; The Lovers.
So basically we are all looking over the wall at a party we weren't invited to
No, you are invited to it. But most choose not to accept, or have trouble getting there ...
Every man and every woman who is free, of full age and good report has a right to pass through the Man of Earth grade and do the first 5 initiations that symbolize (among other things) gestation, birth, life, death , annihilation .
and we do the best we can. Crowley himself saw worth in this, admitting that it was not everyone's Will to devote themselves to the Great Work, but he wanted to give whoever wanted them the tools with which to start.
On a practical note, what I actually can recommend is to read, even if you don't do anything with it, some books about magick. Merely knowing basic terms and rules will greatly aid in understanding some of those "secrets." Kraig's "Modern Magic" and "Modern Sex Magic" are good places to start. Lon Milo Duquette also has a book on the magick of Thelema although I can't recall its name just now.
Yes, that is an important point. At times, one needs to learn shorthand. Eg. a certain amount of Kabbalistic knowledge of correspondences and their fields has to be learnt and examined before some degrees as the 'knowledge lectures are so jammed pack with symbolism, that is permeated , interlocked , etc . the whole thing would be missed.
It is like, it is a lot quicker of I say, Fred has a Mercury Saturn ascendant Grand Trine and a Jupiter Mars conjunction in Leo in the 7th. Some one who doesnt understand that language - I might have to write two pages here to explain it.