The Golden Dawn

by Israel Regardie

by G.H. Frater F.R.32

  The Vault of the Adepti may be said to represent or symbolize various things; first of course, it is the symbolic burying place of our founder C.R.C. It is also the mystic cavern in the sacred mountain of initiation, Abiegnus. Therefore it is the chamber of initiation wherein, after, passing through the preliminary training of the Outer, we are received into the Portal of the Vault of the Rose of Ruby and the Cross of Gold.

  All who are eligible should use the Vault when it is in its place. When working it is well to be clothed in the white robe and yellow sash, yellow slippers, and yellow and white nemyss on your head. The Rose Cross should be upon the breast. Remember that within the Vault you never use a banishing ritual. The chamber is highly charged by the ceremonies which have been held there and the atmosphere thus created should not be disturbed.

  At first I do not recommend you to fast as a preliminary, though later on when you set yourselves to attain some definite point, this may be necessary. Being then clothed, and at peace, you enter the Vault, light the candle, and kindle either a pastile in the small censer or, if you prefer it, some incense in the larger one. Place a chair as near east as you can, and having shut the door stand in the east, facing west, the door by which you entered, the wall bearing the symbol of Venus. Now cross your hands upon your breast in the Sign of Osiris Risen, breathe in a fourfold rhythm, regularly, and compose your mind. Then being calm and collected, make the full L.V.X. signs, repeating the accompanying words, and endeavour to bring down the divine white brilliance. Having done this, seat yourself, and give yourself up to meditation, tranquil and without fear. At first try to feel, it may be, or to see the play of the colours as they pass and repass from side to side and from square to square. Then await with serene expectation what message may be vouchsafed to you. When you are used to the place it is well to extinguish the light, for the darker the material atmosphere the better it is. Before leaving the Vault make the L.V.X. signs, and quit it with arms crossed upon breast in the Sign of Osiris Risen.

  If you have elected to work in a group of two or three, proceed in the same manner, but take care to place yourselves in balanced disposition. Let me warn you never to argue, even in a friendly manner, while in the Vault. It may often happen that one of you sees more or less differently from the others. In this case make an audible note of the differences but do not go on to discuss it till you have ended the sitting, as any discussion is apt to disturb the delicate currents and so break the thread of your vision. It is permissible to take notes in writing during the sitting, but on the whole it is perhaps more satisfactory to impress everything clearly on your mind and write it down immediately afterward.

  The next seven visits should be devoted to a careful study of each side of the Vault in turn, recalling all you know about each before you begin, and having your queries defined before you expect replies.

  Another time, contemplate the roof, and if you feel strong enough, the floor. But it is best for you to have an advanced adept with you for the latter. Again you may draw aside the altar, lift the lid of the Pastos and contemplate the figure you may perceive lying within it. For this you should have a small candle lit on the altar. Or you may lie down in the Pastos yourself and meditate there. Sometimes you may see the simulacrum of C.R.C. in the Pastos, or it may be your own higher self. In every case you should gain knowledge, power, and satisfaction. If you do not, you may be sure you are either acting from a wrong motive, or you are not physically strong enough, or your methods are at fault. No normal person in a good state of mind can possibly spend half an hour in this way without feeling better for it. But if you should happen to be out of harmony with your surroundings or at variance with your neighbours, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled.

  When more than one person enters the Vault they must all make the L.V.X. signs together.

  [contents]

  32. Note by JMG: Dr. Robert W. Felkin, under his motto Finem Respice.

  THE THREE CHIEFS

  By Frater A.M.A.G.

  The first temple founded in England in 1887–88 under the governance of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was named very appropriately Isis-Urania. Isis-Urania is Venus, and she is the occult planet which represents the genius of this order—Venus, the evening and the morning star, presaging the rising of the sun of ineffable light. Venus is also, as Isis, a symbol of the Qabalistic Shekinah, the glory of the presence divine, the Holy Spirit. After the revolt in the order about 1900, the schismatic sect appropriated as the name of their order, Stella Matutina, the Morning Star, thus continuing the significance of the enlightening function and purpose for which the Order was founded originally. For, if one may speak of the Order as having a specific purpose, then that sublime motive is to bring each man to the perfection of his own Kether, to the glory of his own higher genius, to the splendour of the Golden Dawn arising within the heart of his soul. And its technique is always encompassed through the uplifting of the heart and mind by a theurgic invocation to Isis-Urania, the symbolic personification of the Sephiroth of the supernal light.

  It is well known that Venus is a planet peculiarly associated with occult and mystical aspiration. In The Secret Doctrine we find Blavatsky stating that “Venus, or Lucifer, the planet, is the light-bearer of our Earth, in both a physical and mystical sense.” And in quoting from the Stanzas of Dzyan, she presents the statement that “Thus Earth is the adopted child and younger brother of Venus.” Hence a good deal of wisdom is concealed in the very choice of the name of the Order. To this we will have occasion to refer on a later page.

  In the ritual of the grade of Adeptus Minor, the Third Adept, reading from the historical account of the origins of the Order, states that: “The true Order of the Rose Cross ascendeth into the heights even unto the Throne of God himself.” If the reader will well have studied the preliminary knowledge material of the Outer Order, he will remember it is said that the symbol of Venus—a true symbol of growth and development—embraces all the ten Sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Since the Order is under the presidency of Venus, and in view of the above quotation, it would seem that the Order considered from a variety of viewpoints is allied to the Tree of Life, and vice-versa. Thus the system of grades, and the division of the organisation into three separate Orders—the Order of the Golden Dawn in the Outer, the Second Order of the R.R. et A.C., and the unnamed Third Order of Masters, whose Sephiroth obtain above the Abyss—is based upon a natural and a very recondite series of correspondences. “As above so below.” So that as the Tree of Life consists of a glyph which represents not only a material physical universe but also a uranography of the invisible and spiritual world, so does the Order consist, in all actuality, of more than an external Order. Concealed within and behind the grade system, is the invisible Order of true adepts, unknown and, in most cases, unnamed Masters.

  At the close of the second point of the 5° = 6 ceremony, there are named, without further reference, the names and ages of the “three highest chiefs of the Order.” These chiefs are Hugo Alverda, whose age is given as 576, Franciscus, who died at the age of 495 years, and Elman Zata, who died at the age of 463. In addition to these three there is Christian Rosenkreutz, the founder who died at the age of 106 years.

  These enormous ages, unbelievably long in the case of the three chiefs, imply—that is if we accept the history in its obvious and literal sense—that, as adepts, they had discovered and employed the secret of the elixir of life, in order to prolong the period of their usefulness on Earth. And though they have died, that is discarded their purely physical instruments, it is not to be supposed they are cut off from our sphere of activity. Such is not the occult teaching. Apart from the probability that they may have since incarnated voluntarily once more on this plane to continue their work on behalf of mankind in their own silent ways, they would have become what are known in the east as Nirmanakayas. Speaking in The Secret Doctrine of one group of adepts, Blavatsky gives a definition of Ni
rmanakayas which is distinctly worth quoting: “Maruts is, in occult parlance, one of the names given to those Egos of great Adepts who have passed away, and who are known also as Nirmanakayas; of those Egos for whom—since they are beyond illusion—there is no Devachan (heaven) and who, having either voluntarily renounced it for the good of mankind, or not yet reached Nirvana, remain invisible on Earth.” Such must therefore be the nature of the divine guardians of our Order. A few lines following the above quotation in The Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky further remarks “Who they are ‘on earth’—every student of occult science knows.” Whether they do or not, at any rate, it is clear the Order has a little to say on this matter.

  There is an enormous amount of significant material in The Secret Doctrine which should be very suggestive to the student of the magical wisdom. For The Secret Doctrine assists in the comprehension of the Order knowledge, and likewise the Order knowledge makes brilliantly clear what are otherwise highly obscure passages in that colossal monument of Blavatsky’s erudition. The only one of these points that I wish to consider at the moment is this question of adepts in relation to the Order. In the first half of Volume Two of The Secret Doctrine, there is a passage or two which I must quote: “Alone a handful of primitive men—in whom the spark of divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to bad purposes—remained the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers. There were those among them who remained in their Kumaric (divine purity) condition from the beginning; and tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy, which never died since that period.” The magical tradition has it too that the three chiefs and Christian Rosenkreutz were of those who retained their knowledge of their divine origins and spiritual nature, and they have been constantly with us. The student would be well repaid to study what H.P.B. has to say in the first volume of The Secret Doctrine about the stem and root of initiators, that mysterious being who, born in the so-called third race of our evolutionary era, is called “the great sacrifice” and “the tree from which in subsequent ages, all the great historically known sages and hierophants … have branched off.” More cannot be quoted here, but it is all highly significant, and the employment of Order methods corroborates a great deal of what she wrote. But I do intend to quote from what she calls the catechism of the inner schools, which deals still further with the theme of the secret chiefs of our Order, or the undying adepts of all ages. “The inner man of the first … only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvana, spurning Devachan, and remaining constantly on Earth for the Salvation of mankind … Out of the seven virgin-men (Kumara) four sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain until the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen they are ever present. When people say of them, ‘He is dead,’ behold, he is alive and under another form. Thou shalt never speak, O Lanoo, of these great ones before a multitude, mentioning them by their names. The wise alone will understand.” Though I have little intention to speak of them more clearly, little harm can be done from what is already stated above, for the names used are clearly the pseudonyms or magical mottoes of those great beings.

  If, however, we consider these chiefs from a wholly different point of view, the results are no less suggestive. Some students of the order have thought that these three chiefs may be considered as representative of certain principles in nature or as Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, particularly as it is said that the Order of the Rose Cross (the ankh or the Venus symbol) ascends even to the throne of God himself. How may we recover, then, what principles are involved, and why? Two hints are given in the Adeptus Minor ritual as to what procedure the student may follow in order to elucidate these obscure mysteries. Almost deliberately the ritual states, in the first place, that Damcar, whither our father C.R.C. journeyed, may be transliterated into Hebrew, thus yielding , two words which, if translated, mean “the blood of the lamb.” The lamb has always been a symbol of the higher ego. Secondly, there is the analysis of the keyword I.N.R.I., whereby the English letters are transliterated into Hebrew, attributed to certain Yetziratic correspondences, Egyptian deities, signs, and ideas. This must, then, be our technique with regard to this problem. The Qabalah is the means whereby we may unlock the closed doors of the veiled intimations which abound in the Order rituals.

  Through the applications of this technique to the names and ages of the chiefs, one may reasonably conclude that, as the historical lection of the Third Adept showed, they represent the triune supernal light, the divine white brilliance invoked in the Vault of the Adepti—the letter Shin extended, bursting through the balanced elemental powers of Tetragrammaton to confer the attainment of the grade. If we transliterate the names into Hebrew, first of all, we have the following:

  = 541 = 10 = 1 Kether 33

  = 84 = 12 = 3 Binah

  = 776 = 20 = 2 Chokmah 34

  35

  Elman Zata is represented in the rituals as being an Arab; that is, his origins are in the south and east, representing heat and fire, and so the alchemical sulphur is a fit attribution. Sulphur is also an attribution of Chokmah, to which also the element of fire is allocated. Hugo is called the Phrisian. If we refer this to Frisia in Denmark, the north, then the alchemical salt is a proper reference—Binah, and the element of water, the great salt sea. Franciscus is the Gaul, which country is a point between the north and the south, a temperate zone. Hence he is the reconciler between them, a mediator, surely the alchemical mercury. Thus from this point of view, the gematria of the names of the three chiefs allies them with the light of the supernal Sephiroth, that light which ascendeth into the heights, even unto the throne of God himself.

  Leaving, however, the gematria of their individual names for a moment, and proceeding to the Qabalah of the numbers of their ages, an equally interesting and significant fact is revealed.

  Hugo’s age is given as 576, which reduces to 18 = 9.

  Franciscus’s age is given as 495, which reduces to 18 = 9.

  Elman’s age is given as 463, which reduces to 13 = 4.

  Nine plus nine plus four added together equal twenty-two. Twenty-two is the number of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the totality of the paths linking the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life. This number also represents, therefore, the serpent of wisdom which rises from Malkuth to Kether, the ascending spiral, the path which the aspirant to the Great Order must tread. In short, the chiefs represent the path itself which is to be followed, even as they represent the goal which is at the end thereof. Each initiate, it is the universal tradition of the mystic path, must not only treat the way, but must become, even as did these three chiefs, that path itself.

  By referring the number twenty-two in a slightly different way to the Qabalah of Nine Chambers, we may obtain 220, which is the gematria of Kor , the lamb, Abi-Agnus, the strength of our race—also the initials of Christian Rosenkreutz. Moreover, two plus two equals four, which is the number of Daleth, which means a door, referred to Venus, the symbolical figure which embraces the whole Tree of Life, revealing that compassion or love is that fiery force which binds together through an orderly growth and progression the whole Sephirotic scheme into a unity. And Daleth and Venus are the attributions of that door into the tomb of the justified one, the Vault of the Adepti, even as the reciprocal Path of Venus, Daleth, on the Tree of Life, is the secret gate which leads out from the garden of Venus into the newer life, the glory of the boundless light. The secret of that gate abides in the womb of the Great Mother, the intrinsic regenerating nature of the Empress of the tarot—Isis-Urania.

  Again, there are other considerations. At the end of the Order document on the symbolism of the Neophyte grade there is the statement that “Nephesch ha-Mesiach, the Animal Soul of the Messiah” is “the Shekinah or presence between the Kerubim.” Note that the Sh
ekinah represents, as I previously attempted to point out, Aima Elohim, the supernal Sephiroth as a synthetic unity, the divine white brilliance. Since this is spoken of as between the Kerubim, the Middle Pillar of the Tree, which is thus by definition the path of the redeemer or Messiah, the path of the Sushumna traversed by the Kundalini serpent is referred to. Now Messiah in Hebrew is spelt and its gematria is 358. There is another word in Hebrew having precisely the same enumeration, and that word is , nachash, meaning a serpent. As we demonstrated above, the ascending spiral is represented by the serpent of wisdom, which is the path of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet—and to this serpent are the ages of the three chiefs referred. Thus between the serpent of wisdom which represents the way to the crown, the Paths of the Tree of Life, and the power of the chiefs of the Order, there is seen a gematria connection. Interestingly enough, in all ancient systems, the serpent is also the tempter, Lucifer—and once again, Lucifer is Venus, the redeemer.

  Thus the three chiefs of the Order of the R.R. et A.C. are the symbolic representatives of the way to that land which is beyond “honey, and spice and all perfection,” the way to the light itself. But they are also the light at the end of the way; they have become the divine attainment. How significant becomes the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.”

  There is one last correspondence before closing this paper. The symbolic drama of the Adeptus Minor ritual has as its goal the union of the aspirant with the divine nature of Christian Rosenkreutz. Theoretically, it is assumed that our Father C.R.C. is the type and symbol of spiritual attainment, a man who achieved union with his higher and divine genius, and was brought to the light of his Kether. He is portrayed as a living man, who symbolically died, and like Osiris of old, was glorified through trial, perfected through suffering, and rose again in a mystical resurrection. Now in the ritual, he is referred to as “The light of the cross” and this latter is pictorially shown as “I, CXX,” which is 120. The light of the cross, CXX, is of course the L.V.X., the light of the supernals. Now 120 reduces to twelve, and it is interesting to note that twelve is also the numeration of the great angel Hua who is invoked to overshadow the aspirant when he is bound to the cross of obligation. Hua is, in the Zohar, one of the mystical titles of Kether, the crown of the Tree. Analysis of the name expands the idea considerably. The name is composed of three letters, Heh, Vau, Aleph. Heh is five in number, the pentagram which is also the symbol of the microcosm. Vau is six, the hexagram, the symbol of the macrocosm, the greater world. Aleph is Unity. Thus the whole name symbolizes the union of the microcosm with macrocosm, and is a complete synthesis of the nature of the Adeptus Minor grade itself, the accomplishment of the Great Work. So that the very expression of C.R.C.—“I, the Light of the Cross,” with the implication of its number, identifies him mystically with the great angel Hua. Both become therefore the symbolic representatives of the higher and divine genius of the candidate for initiation—giving us the rationale of dramatic ceremonial, that the depicting of the life of a revered personality who at one time in the past attained, may also induce within the heart and mind of the aspirant the overwhelming glory of that same attainment.