In the symbol of the Vault, the psychologist no doubt will see a highly interesting and complex array of mother symbols, traces of which, used in very much the same way, may be found in the literary fragments we inherit from the mystery cults of antiquity. It would be possible, and quite legitimate, so to interpret the Vault. For even the Order interpretation refers the Vault in its entirety to the Isis of nature, the great and powerful mother of mankind and all that is. And an analysis of the separate parts of the Vault—the Venus door, the Pastos, the two pillars—would subscribe to that view. For regeneration and the second birth have always as creative psychological states been associated with the mother. And it may be recalled that the neschamah or that principle in man that constantly strives for the superhuman shining heights, is always portrayed as a feminine principle, passive, intuitive, and alluring. Whilst the universal counterpart of this human principle, represented on the Tree of Life by the supernals, is always described by the medieval alchemists as a virginal figure, from whose life and substance all things have issued, and through whose agency man is brought to the second birth.
The reader is earnestly recommended to study this ritual again and again until almost it becomes a part of his very life, incorporated into the very fabric of his being. Very little aesthetic appreciation will be required to realize that in this and the other rituals are passages of divine beauty and high eloquence. And the least learned will find ideas of especial appeal to him, as the scholar and the profound mystic will perceive great depth and erudition in what may appear on the surface as simple statement. Properly performed, with initiated technique and insight, these rituals are stately ceremonies of great inspiration and enlightenment.
The apparent complexity of the above delineated scheme may be thought by some individuals to be entirely too complicated for modern man and not sufficiently simple in nature. While one can deeply sympathize with the ideas of the extreme simplicity cult in mysticism, nevertheless it is evident that the complex and arduous nature of the routine is no fault of magic. Man himself is responsible for this awkward situation. To be purified was considered by the alchemists and the theurgists of a bygone day as not nearly enough. That purification and consecration was required to be repeated and repeated, again and again. Because of countless centuries of evolution and material development—sometimes in quite false directions—man has spiritually repressed himself, and thus gradually forgotten his true divine nature. Meanwhile, as a sort of compensation for this loss, he has developed a complexity of physical and psychic constitution for dealing adequately with the physical world. Hence, methods of spiritual development refusing to admit the reality of that many-principled organization may not be recognized as valid, for the sole reason that man is not a simple being. Fundamentally and at root he may be simple, but in actuality he is not. Having strayed from his roots, and lost his spiritual birthright in a jungle of delusion, it is not always easy to rediscover those roots or to find the way out from the gates of the land of night.
In contradistinction to the above-mentioned type of amorphous mystical doctrine, magic does recognize the many-faceted nature of man. If that intricate structure so painfully constructed be considered an evil, as some seem to think, it is a necessary evil. It is one to be faced and used. Therefore magic connives by its technique to use, develop, and improve each of these several principles to its highest degree of perfection. “Thou must prepare thyself,” counsels Vaughan, “till thou art conformable to Him whom thou wouldst entertain, and that in every respect. Fit thy roof to thy God in what thou canst, and in what thou canst not He will help thee. When thou hast thus set thy house in order, do not think thy Guest will come without invitation. Thou must tire Him out with pious importunities.
Perpetual knockings at His door,
Tears sullying his transparent rooms,
Sighs upon sighs; weep more and more—
He comes.
This is the way thou must walk in, which if thou dost thou shall perceive a sudden illustration, and there shall then abide in thee fire with light, wind with fire, power with wind, knowledge with power, and with knowledge an integrity of sober mind!”
Not enough is it to be illuminated. The problem is not quite as simple as that. It is in vain that the wine of the gods is poured into broken bottles. Each part of the soul, each elemental aspect of the entire man must be strengthened and transmuted and brought into equilibrium and harmony with the others. Integration must be the rule of the initiate, not pathology. In such a vehicle made consecrate and truly holy by this equilibration, the higher genius may find a worthy and fit dwelling. This and this alone, may ever constitute the true nature of initiation.
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With each of the grades just described, a certain amount of personal work was provided, principally of a theoretical kind. The basic ideas of the Qabalah were imparted by means of so-called knowledge lectures, together with certain important symbols, and significant names in Hebrew were required to be memorized. The lamens—insignia worn over the heart—of the various officers were referred in diverse ways to the Tree of Life, thus explaining after a fashion the function of that particular office in the temple of initiation. Each path traversed, and every grade entered, had a so-called admission badge. This usually consisted of one of the many forms of the cross, and of symbols of the type of the swastika, truncated pyramid, and so forth. To these astrological and elemental attributions were referred. Most of these symbols possess great value, and since they repeatedly recur under different guises through the stages of personal magical work undertaken after the Adeptus Minor grade, they should receive the benefit of prolonged brooding and meditation.
Three of the most important items of personal study to be accomplished while in the First or Outer Order, apart from the memorization of the rudiments of the Qabalah, were: (a) the practice of the Pentagram ritual with the Qabalistic cross, (b) tattwa vision, and (c) divination by geomancy and the simple tarot method described by Waite in his Key to the Tarot.
The Pentagram Ritual was taught to the Neophyte immediately after his initiation in order that he might “form some idea of how to attract and come into communication with spiritual and invisible things.” Just as the Neophyte ceremony of admission contains the essential symbolism of the Great Work, shadowing forth symbolically the commencement of certain formulae of the Magic of Light, so potential within the Pentagram Ritual and the Qabalistic cross are the epitomes of the whole of that work. In all magical procedure it is fundamental, for it is a gesture of upraising the human consciousness to its own root of perfection and enlightenment by which the sphere of sensation and every act performed under its surveillance are sanctified. Thus it should precede every phase of magical work, elementary as well as advanced. The written rubric has previously appeared in my Tree of Life, and I may now add a word or two concerning the further directions that are orally imparted to the candidate after his admission.
The prime factor towards success in that exercise is to imagine that the astral form is capable of expansion, that it grows tall and high, until at length it has the semblance of a vast angelic figure, whose head towers amongst the distant stars of heaven. When this imaginative expansion of consciousness produces the sense that the height is enormous, with Earth as a tiny globe revolving beneath the feet, then above the head should be perceived or formulated a descending ray of brilliant light. As the candidate marks the head and then the breast, so should this brilliance descend, even down to his feet, a descending shaft of a gigantic cross of light. The act of marking the shoulders right and left whilst vibrating the Sephirotic names, traces the horizontal shaft of the cross, equilibrating the light within the sphere of sensation. Since it has been argued above that the Great Work consists in the search for the light, this ritual truly and completely performed leads to the accomplishment of that Work and the personal discovery of the light. The pentagrams trace a cleansing and protecting circle of force invoked by the four names of four letters each about the l
imits of the personal sphere, and the archangels are called, by vibration, to act as great stabilizing influences.
The study of the different types of divination may seem difficult to understand in an Order that purported to teach methods of spiritual development. Many will no doubt be rather perplexed by this. Divination usually is said to refer exclusively to the low occult arts, to fortunetelling, and to the prognostication of the future. Actually, however, so far as the Order is concerned, the principal object for these practical methods is that they stimulate, as few exercises can, the faculties of clairvoyance, imagination, and intuition. Though certain readings or interpretations to the geomantic and tarot symbols may be found in the appropriate textbooks, these rule of thumb methods do not conduce to the production of an accurate delineation of the spiritual causes behind material events. These interpretations are usual to the beginner in the art, for he requires a foundation of the principal definitions employed upon which his own meditations can build. These textual delineations in actual practice serve only as a base for the working of the inner faculties, provides for them a thrust-block as it were from which they may “kick off.” In short, the effort to divine by these methods calls into operation the intuitive and imaginative faculties to a very large extent. Everyone without exception has this faculty of divining in some degree, varying only in his ability to make it manifest. In most people it is wholly dormant.
Again, while divination as an artificial process may be wholly unnecessary and a hindrance to the refined perceptions of a fully developed adept, who requires no such convention to ascertain whence a thing comes and whither it is going, yet these aids and stimuli have their proper place for the Neophyte. For those in training, they are not only legitimate but useful and necessary. It may be interesting for the reader to attempt to acquire intuitive knowledge on any matter without the divinatory aids first, and it will be seen how extremely difficult it is to get started, to pick upon any one fact or incident which shall act as a prompt or a starter of the interior mechanism. Having failed in this way, let him see how much further he really may go by the judicious and sensible use of one of the Order methods. There is no doubt that the opening of the mind to an intuitive perception is considerably aided by these methods. And this is particularly true with regard to the rather lengthy tarot method, which was given to the initiate while engaged in the fulfillment of his Adeptus Minor curriculum. Like all magical techniques, divination is open to abuse. The fact, however, that abuse is possible does not, as again and again must be reiterated, fully condemn the abused technique. The application of common sense to the magical art is as necessary as it is to all else.
There was a movement on foot in one of the temples a little while ago to eliminate the study and practice of geomancy from the scheme of training of the Outer Order. The prevailing tendency is so to simplify the road to adeptship as to reduce the practical requisites to an absolute minimum by eliminating every phase of the work which does not come “naturally,” and whose study might involve hard work. Most of the newly admitted candidates to this temple within the past five years or more are utterly without any practical acquaintance with this technique.
Originally, astrology was taught as part of the regular routine. All instruction on this subject seems now to have been thoroughly extirpated from the Order papers. Perhaps in this particular instance the omission is just as well. For recent years have seen a great deal of meticulous attention paid to this study by sincere and honest researchers, and there have been published many first-rate books explaining its intricacies. All that the Order demands of the Adeptus Minor is that he should be able to draw up a map showing the position of planets and signs, preparatory to certain operations requiring the invocation of zodiacal forces.
Tattwa vision requires but little mention in this place, for full instructions in this technical method of acquiring clairvoyance may be seen in a later volume. They are compiled from a number of documents and verbal instructions obtaining within the Order. Since these oral “tit-bits” and papers were very scattered, it has been found necessary to reorganize the whole matter. In that restatement, however, I have exercised no originality nor uttered personal viewpoints on any phase of the technique, confining my labor solely to rewriting the material in my possession. It may be interesting for the psychological critic to reflect upon the fact that it was this technique to which most members of the Order devoted the greatest attention—the only technique in which, more than any other single branch of the work, there is greater opportunity for deception and self-deception. While in many ways the Order technique may appear different from the vision method described in my Tree of Life, both are essentially the same. For they teach the necessity of an imaginative formation of an intellectual or astral form, the Body of Light, for the purpose of exploring the different regions of the Tree of Life or the several strata of one’s own psychic makeup. The simpler aspects of this investigation are taught just after the grade of Philosophus, though naturally the full possibilities of this method and the complete details on the technical side do not reveal themselves until the teaching of the Second Order has been received.
In addition to these technical methods, there were meditations on the symbols and ideas of the whole system, and it was quite frequently suggested that the student go through the ceremonies, after having taken the grades, and build them up in his imagination so that he relives them as vividly as when he was in the temple. The practical exercise that accompanied the Portal grade was one in which the aspirant built up, again in the imagination, a symbolic form of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, paying at first particular attention to the formulation of the Middle Pillar in the sphere of sensation or aura. This latter was conceived to be an ovoid shape of subtle matter, and the imaginative formulation of the various Sephiroth therein whilst vibrating the appropriate divine names went far towards opening, in a safe and balanced way, the psycho-spiritual centers of which the Sephiroth were but symbols. This technique, with the so-called Vibratory Formula of the Middle Pillar that is a development therefrom, I consider to be one of the most important practical systems employed in the Order. Though the documents describe it in a very rudimentary and sketchy fashion, nevertheless it is capable of expansion in several quite astonishing directions. I have discussed and expanded this technique at considerable length in my book The Art of True Healing.
So far, I have confined myself to a bird’s-eye view of the routine as established in the First or Outer Order of the Golden Dawn. The graduated training of the entire Outer was intended as a preparation for the practical work to be performed in the Inner or Second Order of the Roseae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. The assignation of personal magical work seems deliberately to have been postponed until after the Vault reception. It was held that the ceremony formulated a link between the aspirant and his Augoeides, that connection serving therefore as a guide and a powerful protection, which is clearly required in the works of ceremonial magic. Since at the commencement of each serious operation the initiate must needs exalt himself towards his higher and divine genius that through him may flow the divine power which alone is capable of producing a pure magical work, the initial forging of that link is a matter of supreme importance.
Let me now detail the curriculum of work prescribed in the Second Order. The training of the Adeptus Minor consisted of eight separate items, and I quote the following from a syllabus “A—General Orders,” now in circulation.
“Part One. A. Preliminary. Receive and copy: Notes on the Obligation. The Ritual of the 5 = 6 Grade. The manuscript, “Sigils from the Rose.” The Minutum Mundum. Having made your copies of these and returned the originals you should study them in order to prepare to sit for the written examination. You must also arrange with the adept in whose charge you are, about your examination in the temple on the practical work.
“Part Two. Receive the Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram. Copy and learn them. You can now sit for the written examination in these subjects and complete �
�A’ by arranging to be tested in your practical knowledge in the temple.
“Part One. B. Implements. Receive the Rituals of the Lotus Wand, Rose Cross, Sword, and the Elemental Weapons. Copy and return them. There is a written examination on the above subjects—that is on the construction, symbolism, and use of these objects, and the general nature of a consecration ceremony and the forming of invocations. This can be taken before the practical work of making is begun or at any stage during it.
“Part Two. This consists in the making of the implements that must be passed as suitable before the consecration is arranged for, in the presence of a Chief or other qualified adept. The making and consecration are done in the order given above unless it is preferred to do all the practical work first, and make arrangements for consecration as convenient.
“Part One. G. Neophyte Formulae. Receive and copy Z. 1 on the symbols and formulae of the Neophyte Ritual. Z. 3, the symbolism of the Neophyte in this Ceremony. Copy the godform designs of the Neophyte Ritual. The written examination on the Z. manuscripts may now be taken.
“Part Two. To describe to the Chief or other suitable adept in the temple the arrangement of the astral temple and the relative position of the forms in it. To build up any godform required, using the correct Coptic name.”
The Golden Dawn Page 9