It was upon this schema and from this original body, to state it briefly, that the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn claimed direct descent. Its history lecture, however, volunteered very few verifiable details as to the historical facts which, from the scholarly point of view, we should be acquainted with—the details for example of the line of descent from, say, 1614 to 1865. Current within the present-day Order was the belief that at various dates within the period named, the Order as an organized body of students ceased to exist. Instead, there was an oral continuation of teaching from isolated initiates here, there, and everywhere, until more recent times when religious and political conditions did not militate against the advisability of formulating a group. With the institution of a definite body, the original system of grades was reestablished, and the systems of alchemy, the Qabalah, and magic once more were taught to zealous, aspiring Neophytes. As a cloak to their activities, they likewise continued in the early agreement of the Order, which was:
“First, that none of them should profess any other thing than to cure the sick, and that gratis.
“Second, none of the posterity should be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit, but therein to follow the custom of the country.
“Third, that every year, upon the day C. they should meet together at the house Sanctus Spiritus, or write the cause of his absence.
“Fourth, every brother should look about for a worthy person who, after his decease, might succeed him.
“Fifth, the word R.C. should be their seal, mark, and character.
“Sixth, the fraternity should remain secret one hundred years.”
With this preliminary account, we may turn to the claims of the Order within the more historical times of the late nineteenth century, though unfortunately, these claims are no more verifiable and certainly no clearer than those that characterized its beginning.
“The Order of the Golden Dawn,” narrates the history lecture of that Order, “is an Hermetic society whose members are taught the principles of occult science and the magic of Hermes. During the early part of the second half of last century, several eminent adepti and chiefs of the Order in France and England died, and their death caused a temporary dormant condition of temple work.
“Prominent among the adepti of our Order and of public renown were Eliphas Lévi, the greatest of modern French magi; Ragon, the author of several books of occult lore; Kenneth M. Mackenzie, author of the famous and learned Masonic Encyclopaedia; and Frederick Hockley, possessed of the power of vision in the crystal, and whose manuscripts are highly esteemed. These and other contemporary adepti of this Order received their knowledge and power from predecessors of equal and even of greater eminence. They received indeed and have handed down to us their doctrine and system of theosophy and Hermetic science and the higher alchemy from a long series of practiced investigators whose origin is traced to the Fratres Roseae Crucis of Germany, which association was founded by one Christian Rosenkreutz about the year 1398 AD.
“The Rosicrucian revival of mysticism was but a new development of the vastly older wisdom of the Qabalistic rabbis and of that very ancient secret knowledge, the magic of the Egyptians, in which the Hebrew Pentateuch tells you that Moses, the founder of the Jewish system, was ‘learned,’ that is, in which he had been initiated.”
In a slender but highly informative booklet entitled Data of the History of the Rosicrucians published in 1916 by the late Dr. William Wynn Westcott, we find the following brief statement: “In 1887 by permission of S.D.A. a continental Rosicrucian adept, the Isis-Urania Temple of Hermetic Students of the G.D. was formed to give instruction in the mediaeval occult sciences. Fratres M.E.V. with S.A. and S.R.M.D. became the chiefs, and the latter wrote the rituals in modern English from old Rosicrucian mss. (the property of S.A.) supplemented by his own literary researches.”
In these two statements is narrated the beginning of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—an organization which has exerted a greater influence on the development of occultism since its revival in the last quarter of the nineteenth century than most people can realize. There can be little or no doubt that the Golden Dawn is, or rather was until very recently, the sole depository of magical knowledge, the only occult Order of any real worth that the West in our time has known. A great many other occult organizations owe what little magical knowledge is theirs to leakages issuing from that Order and from its renegade members.
The membership of the Golden Dawn was recruited from every circle, and it was represented by dignified professions as well as by all the arts and sciences, to make but little mention of the trades and business occupations. It included physicians, psychologists, clergymen, artists, and philosophers. And normal men and women, humble and unknown, from every walk of life have drawn inspiration from its font of wisdom, and undoubtedly many would be happy to recognize and admit the enormous debt they owe it.
As an organization, it preferred after the fashion of its mysterious parent always to shroud itself in an impenetrable cloak of mystery. Its teaching and methods of instruction were stringently guarded by serious penalties attached to the most awe-inspiring obligations in order to ensure that secrecy. So well have these obligations, with but one or two exceptions, been kept that the general public knows next to nothing about the Order, its teaching, or the extent and nature of its membership. Though this book will touch upon the teaching of the Golden Dawn, concerning its membership as a whole the writer will have nothing to say, except perhaps to repeat what may already be more or less well known. For instance, it is common knowledge that W.B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and if rumour may be trusted, the late Allan Bennett were at one time among its members, together with a good many other writers and artists.
With regard to the names given in Dr. Westcott’s statement, it is necessary that we bestow to them some little attention in order to unravel, so far as may be possible, the almost inextricable confusion which has characterized every previous effort to detail the history of the Order. M.E.V. was the motto chosen by Dr. William Robert Woodman, an eminent Freemason of the last century. Sapere Aude and Non Omnis Moriar were the two mottoes used by Dr. Westcott, an antiquarian, scholar, and coroner by profession. S.R.M.D. or S’ Rhiogail Ma Dhream was the motto of S.L. MacGregor Mathers, the translator of The Greater Key of King Solomon, the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and The Kabbalah Unveiled, which latter consisted of certain portions of the Zohar prefixed by an introduction of high erudition. He also employed the Latin motto Deo Duce Comite Ferro. S.D.A. was the abbreviation of the motto Sapiens Dominabitur Astris chosen by a Fraulein Anna Sprengel of Nuremberg, Germany. Such were the actors on this occult stage, this the dramatis personae in the background of the commencement of the Order. More than any other figures who may later have prominently figured in its government and work, these are the four outstanding figures publicly involved in the English foundation of what came to be known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
How the actual instigation of the Order came to pass is not really known. Or rather, because of so many conflicting stories and legends, the truth is impossible to discover. At any rate, so far as England is concerned, without a doubt we must seek for its origin in the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. This was an organization formulated in 1865 by eminent Freemasons, some of them claiming authentic Rosicrucian initiation from continental authorities. Amongst those who claimed such initiation was one Kenneth H. Mackenzie, a Masonic scholar and encyclopaedist, who had received his at the hands of a Count Apponyi in Austria. The objects of this society, which confined its membership to Freemasons in good standing, was “to afford mutual aid and encouragement in working out the great problems of Life, and in discovering the secrets of nature; to facilitate the study of the systems of philosophy founded upon the Kaballah and the doctrines of Hermes Trismegistus.” Dr. Westcott also remarks that today its Fratres “are concerned in the study and administration of medicines, and in their manufacture upon old lines; they also teach
and practice the curative effects of coloured light, and cultivate mental processes that are believed to induce spiritual enlightenment and extended powers of the human senses, especially in the directions of clairvoyance and clairaudience.”
The first chief of this society, its Supreme Magus so-called, was one Robert Wentworth Little who is said to have rescued some old rituals from a certain Masonic storeroom, and it was from certain of those papers that the society’s rituals were elaborated. He died in 1878, and in his stead was appointed Dr. William R. Woodman. Both Dr. Westcott and MacGregor Mathers were prominent and active members of this body. In fact, the former became Supreme Magus upon Woodman’s death, the office of Junior Magus being conferred upon Mathers. One legend has it that one day Westcott discovered in his library a series of cipher manuscripts, and in order to decipher them he enlisted the aid of MacGregor Mathers. It is said that this library was that of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, and it is likewise asserted that those cipher manuscripts were among the rituals and documents originally rescued by Robert Little from Freemason’s Hall. Yet other accounts have it that Westcott or a clerical friend found the manuscripts on a bookstall in Farringdon Street. Further apocryphal legends claim that they were found in the library of books and manuscripts inherited from the mystic and clairvoyant Frederick Hockley, who died in 1885. Whatever the real origin of these mysterious cipher manuscripts, when eventually deciphered with the aid of MacGregor Mathers, they were alleged to have contained the address of a Fraulein Anna Sprengel who purported to be a Rosicrucian adept, in Nuremberg. Here was a discovery that, naturally, not for one moment was neglected. Its direct result was a lengthy correspondence with Fraulein Sprengel, culminating in the transmission of authority to Woodman, Westcott, and Mathers to formulate in England a semi-public occult organization that was to employ an elaborate magical ceremonial, Qabalistic teaching, and a comprehensive scheme of spiritual training. Its foundation was designed to include both men and women on a basis of perfect equality in contradistinction to the policy of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, which was comprised wholly of Freemasons. Thus, in 1887, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was established. Its first English Temple, Isis-Urania, was opened in the following year.
There is a somewhat different version as to its origin, having behind it the authority of Frater F.R., the late Dr. Felkin, who was the Chief of the Stella Matutina as well as a member of the Societas Rosicruciana. According to his account, and the following words are substantially his own, prior to 1880, members of the Rosicrucian Order on the Continent selected with great care their own candidates whom they thought suitable for personal instruction. For these pupils they were each individually responsible, the pupils thus selected being trained by them in the theoretical traditional knowledge now used in the Outer Order. After some three or more years of intensive private study, these pupils were presented to the chiefs of the Order, and if approved and passed by examination, they then received their initiation into the Order of the Roseae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis.
The political state of Europe in the nineteenth century was such that the strictest secrecy as to the activities of these people was very necessary. England, however, where many Masonic bodies and semiprivate organizations were flourishing without interference, was recognized as having far greater freedom and liberty than the countries in which the continental adepts were domiciled. Some, but by no means all, suggested therefore that in England open temple work might be inaugurated. And Dr. Felkin here adds, though without the least word of explanation as to what machinery was set in motion towards the attainment of that end, “and so it was … It came about then that temples arose in London, Bradford, Weston-super-Mare, and Edinburgh. The ceremonies we have were elaborated from cipher manuscripts, and all went well for a time.”
Since the history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn subsequent to this period has already been narrated elsewhere, there is little need to repeat it. Those who may be interested in a detailed, meticulous history of the Rosicrucian claim as it has existed in Europe during the past three hundred years are advised to consult Arthur Edward Waite’s The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, while in my small work My Rosicrucian Adventure the events that occurred to the Golden Dawn, culminating in this present publication of its teaching and rituals, are delineated at some length. The motives that have confirmed me in this decision to act contrary to the obligation of secrecy are there presented and discussed. And with these directions, let us pass from historical bones to what is the dynamic life and soul of the Order, its teaching and ceremonial technique of initiation.
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Before one can grasp the nature of ceremonial initiation, which was the assumed function of the Golden Dawn, a few fundamental notions of the philosophy underlying its practice must be grasped. The basic theory of the Order system was such as to identify certain of the grades with various spiritual principles existing in the universe. Hence a philosophy which describes, classifies, and purports to understand the nature of the universe must be studied before the significance of the grades can be appreciated. One of the most important backgrounds of the system is the scheme of the Qabalah, a Jewish system described at length in my Tree of Life and the knowledge lectures herein. Since it is primarily a mystical method, the Qabalah has innumerable points of identity with the more ancient systems elaborated by other peoples in other parts of the world. Its most important root concept is that the ultimate root from which this universe, with all things therein, has evolved is Ain Soph Aour, infinite or limitless light. So far as our minds are capable of conceiving such metaphysical abstractions, this is to be understood as an infinite ocean of brilliance wherein all things are held as within a matrix, from which all things were evolved, and it is that divine goal to which all life and all beings eventually must return.
Issuing from or within this boundless light, there manifests what is called the Tree of Life. Qabalists have produced a conventional glyph indicating thereupon ten numerations or Sephiroth, which are the branches of that Tree growing or evolving within space, ten different modes of the manifestation of its radiation—ten varying degrees of but one ubiquitous substance-principle.
The first of these numeration is called Kether, the Crown, and is the first manifestation from the unknown, a concentration of its infinite light. As the radiant apex of this heavenly tree, it is the deepest sense of selfhood and the ultimate root of substance. It constitutes the divine centre of human consciousness, all the other principles which comprise what we call man being rather like so many layers of an onion around a central core. From this metaphysical and universal centre duality issues, two distinct principles of activity, the one named Chokmah, Wisdom, and the other Binah, Understanding. Here we have the roots of polarity, male and female, positive and negative, fire and water, mind and matter, and these two ideas are the noumena of all the various opposites in life of which we have cognizance.
These three emanations are unique in a special way, and they especially symbolize that “light which shineth in darkness,” the light of the spiritual self. As light shines into darkness, illuminating it without suffering a diminution of its own existence, so the workings of the Supernals, as these three Sephiroth are called, overflow from their exuberant being without thereby diminishing in any degree the reality or infinite vitality of their source. They are considered hence to have but little relation with the inferior Sephiroth that issue from them, except as stem and root. Yet though hardly in any philosophic relation to our phenomenal universe, we find when engaged in magical working that it is customary—even necessary—to open ourselves by invocation to its influence so that this divine power of the supernal light, descending through the human mind, may sanctify and accomplish the object of the ceremony itself. The Supernals are often portrayed diagrammatically and symbolically as a woman clothed with the sun, stars above her head and the moon at her feet—the typical anima figure of modern psychology.
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