Society of The Guardians - Michael Freedman

Michael Freedman

That history is unverifiable; however in 1970 Michael Freedman and his wife moved to New Zealand, where he worked as a psychologist. He opened a "Sanctuary of the Holy Angels" in a house on Horoeka Avenue, on the slopes of Mt Eden and built a flourishing order.

Ritual, Kabbalah and Astrology were key elements of the Order's work. The Guardians described their rites as "Mithraist in a very broad sense", and these were observed according to solar and lunar cycles. At the Mt Eden Sanctuary a Mass of the Holy Archangels was held each Saturday evening to mark the beginning of the new week, and solstices and equinoxes were observed. The order's rites involved dancing and offerings of bread, salt, honey, wine and incense as libations to Mother Earth, and contained words from both Jesus and the Buddha.

In 1978 the order began offering a free meditation course by correspondence, one they claimed was free of any dogma or "mystical mumbo-jumbo", and was just as beneficial as the very expensive courses available in Transcendental Meditation.

The Senior Guardian Michael Freedman also presided over a collective which published New Zealand's leading esoteric and occult periodical for a number of years, initially called Magic Pentacle, and later, after Michael Freedman's death in 1996, New Pentacle. Freedman wrote many articles in the magazine, and was also working on a number of translations of Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts into English, including a translation of a version of the Sefer Yetzirah.