Table Of Contents
Aleister Crowley
Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn
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Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
One
of the most influential Western occult societies of the late 19th centuries to
early 20th century. Like a meteor, it flared into light, blazed a bright trail
and then disintegrated. Members included W. B. Yeats, A. E. Waite, Aleister
Crowley, and other noted occultists of that time.
The key founder of the Golden dawn was Dr. William Westcott. In 1887 Westcott
obtained part of a manuscript written in brown-ink cipher from the Rev. A. F. A.
Woodford, a Mason. The manuscript appeared to be old but probably was not. From
his Hermetic knowledge, Westcott was able to decipher the manuscript and
determine it contained fragments of rituals for the "Golden Dawn," an unknown
organization that apparently admitted both men and women.
Westcott asked an occultist friend, Samuel Liddell Macgregor Matthews, to flesh
out the fragments of into full scale rituals. Some papers evidently were forged
to give the "Golden Dawn" authenticity and a history. It was said to be an old
German occult order. Westcott produced papers that showed he had been given a
charter to set up an independent lodge in England. The Isis-Urania Temple of the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was established in 1888, with Westcott,
Mathers and Dr. W. R. Woodman, Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian society of
Anglia, as the three Chiefs and quickly caught on. During the height of the
society's popularity, from 1888 to 1896 315 initiations took place.
An elaborate hierarchy was created, consisting of 10 grades or degrees, each
corresponding to the 10 sephiroth of the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah, plus an
11th degree for neophytes. The degrees are divided into three orders: Outer,
Second, and Third.
One advanced through the Outer Order by examination. Initially, Westcott,
Mathers and Woodman were the only members of the Second Order, and they claimed
to be under the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order, who were entities of the
astral plane. Mather's rituals were based largely on Freemasonry.
In 1891, Woodman died and was not replaced in the organization. Mathers produced
the initiation ritual for the Adeptus Minor rank and renamed the Second Order
the Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, or the Order of the Rose of Ruby and
Cross of Gold (R. R. et A. C.). Initiation was by invitation only.
Mathers was at the very least eccentric and possibly mentally unstable. He never
consummated his marriage with his wife, Mina, who, he said, received teachings
from the Secret Chiefs through clairaudience, or supernormal hearing. His
finances were erratic, and in 1891 he and his wife were penniless. A rich Golden
Dawner, Annie Horniman, became their benefactor and Mathers and his wife moved
to Paris, where he set up another lodge. He continued to write curricula
materials and send them to London. He was obsessed with jealousy over Westcott
and became increasingly autocratic. He devoted a great deal of his time to
translating the manuscript of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the
Mage, which he claimed was bewitched and inhabited by a species of nonphysical
intelligence. (The book was eventually published in 1898.)
In 1896, Horniman cut off her financial support to the Mathers. The same year,
Mathers claimed that the Secret Chiefs had initiated him into the Third Order.
Horniman disputed his claim and was expelled from the society. In 1897, members
began to discover Westcott's questionable role in "discovering" the Golden Dawn.
He resigned his post and was succeeded by Florence Farr. By then great rifts
were forming in forming between the leading members of the Golden Dawn.
Aleister Crowley was initiated in 1898 and rapidly rose up in the ranks. In 1899
he went to Paris and insisted upon being initiated into the Second Order.
Mathers complied. The London lodge, under Farr, rejected his initiation. In 1900
Crowley went to England as Mather's "Envoy Extraordinary" and attempted to take
control of the quarters of the Second Order. He appeared wearing a black mask,
Highland dress and a gilt dagger, and staged a dramatic attempt but was
rebuffed.
The Crowley--Mathers alliance was an uneasy one. Crowley considered himself a
superior magician to Mathers. The two supposedly engaged in magical warfare:
Mathers sent an astral vampire to attack Crowley psychically, and Crowley
responded with an army of demons. After Crowley's attack on the Second Order
quarters, the London Lodge expelled both Crowley and Mathers. Crowley retaliated
by publishing some of the Golden Dawn's secret rituals in his periodical The
Equinox.
W. B. Yeats took over the Second order. He attempted to restore unity, but the
schisms in the Golden Dawn broke into independent groups. Followers of Mathers
formed the Alpha et Omega Temple. In 1903 A. E. Waite and others left, forming a
group with the name Golden Dawn, but with more of an emphasis on mysticism than
magic. In 1905 another splinter group was formed, the Stella Matutina, or "Order
of the Companions of the Rising Light in the Morning." The Isis-Uranian Temple
became defunct and was resurrected in 1917 as the Merlin Temple of the Stella
Matutina. The Stella Matutina went into decline in the 1940s, following the
publication of its secret rituals by a former member, Israel Regardie, Crowley's
one time secretary.
Waite's group, which retained the Golden Dawn name and some of its rituals,
declined after 1915 with Waite's departure. Some distant offshoots of the Golden
Dawn continue in existence. The modern Order, though it bears much of the same
structuring, seems to have resolved the rifts in an admirable matter. Look at
almost any site devoted to the Golden Dawn and you will find a biographies
section of the important figures in its history. To date, of the better than 300
sites I have seen, the biographies sections are identical in wording and neatly
avoid mentioning most of the rifts.
During its height, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn possessed the greatest
known repository of Western Magickal knowledge. Second Order studies centered on
the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Three magickal systems were taught: the Key of
Solomon, Abra-Melin magic, and Enochian magick. Materials also were incorporated
from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, William Blake's Prophetic Books, and the
Chaldean Oracles. Instruction was given in astral travel, scrying, alchemy,
geomancy, the Tarot, and astrology.
Aleister Crowley
Thelemic
Golden Dawn - T.·.G.·.D.·.
Temple of Thelema - T.·.O.·.T.·.
Ordo Templi Orientis - O.·.T.·.O.·.
Holy Order of Ra-Hoor-Khuit - H.O.O.R.
Cor Lucis - The Heart of Light
Hermetic Alchemical Order of QBLH
Not only is Crowley one of the best known
figures in Pagan history, but was probably the most controversial and
misunderstood magician and occultist in his time. He has been both vilified and
idolized; a man of low excesses and high brilliance who believed himself to be
the reincarnation of other great occultists such as Pope Alexander VI who was
infamous for his love of physical pleasures; Edward Kelly who was the notorious
assistant of John Dee (who was sometimes known as "the last royal magician") in
Elizebethan England; Cagliostro; Ankh-f-n-Khonsu (an Egyptian Priest of the
XXVIth dynasty; and Eliphas Levi (who had died on the day Crowley was born).
Aleister Crowley was born in 1875 in Warwickshire England. His father, a brewer
and preacher of the beliefs of a sect founded of the Plymouth Brethern in 1830
that considered itself the only true Christian order (a belief that many modern
Christian paths seem to share to judge by the actions of some of the followers).
Crowley participated in worshipping alongside his father until his teens when he
rebelled very strongly against it. His mother, also a devout Plymouthist,
labeled him "the Beast" referring to him as the Antichrist which led to him
referring to her as "a brainless bigot of the most narrow, logical, and inhuman
type." His father died when he was 11 and it can safely be guessed that Crowley
never shed a tear.
As Crowley grew older he become interested in the occult, discovered he was
excited by descriptions of torture and blood, and engaged in fantasies about
being degraded by a Scarlet Woman who was both wicked and independent. It is now
believed that this was just an extension of his endless rebellion against his
fanatically Christian parents and the Scarlet Woman symbolized for him the
antithesis of his mother.
He entered Trinity College at Cambridge, where he wrote poetry and independently
pursued his occult studies. He was an avid rock climber, mountain climber, and
even attempted some of the highest peaks in the Himalayas. In 1898 he published
his first book of poetry, Aceldama, A Place to Bury Strangers In. A
Philosophical Poem. By A gentleman of the University of Cambridge, 1898. In the
introduction, he described how God and Satan had fought for his soul: "God
conquered -- now I have only one doubt left -- which of the twain was God?"
Crowley aspired to become known as a great person. After reading Arthur Edward
Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, which hints at a secret
brotherhood of adepts who dispense occult wisdom to certain chosen initiates,
Crowley was led to choose magic as a vacation rather than an avocation. Crowley
was so intrigued that he wrote Waite for more information and was referred to
The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, by Carl von Eckartshausen, which told of the Great
White Brotherhood. Crowley became determined to not only join the Brotherhood,
but to advance to the highest degree possible.
On November 18, 1898, Crowley joined the London chapter of the Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn, which was the first or outer order of the Great White
Brotherhood, discovered he had a natural aptitude for magick and rose quickly
through the hierarchy. He began practicing Yoga, and through it discovered his
other incarnations. He left Trinity College without earning a degree, took a
flat on Chancery Lane, named himself Count Vladimir and pursued his independent
occult studies on a full time basis. He advanced through the First Order and
sought entry into the Second Order of the Great Whtie Brotherhood, a Rosicrucian
order also called the Order of the Red Rose and Golden Cross. Beyond this was
the top order, the Silver Star or the Argentum Astrum which had three grades:
Master of the Temple, Magus, and Impissimus. The latter could be achieved only
by crossing an unknown and uncharted Abyss.
Crowley was intensely competitive with S. L. MacGregor Mathers (then chief of
the Hermetic Order of the Golden dawn and a talented magician himself) who had
instructed him in Abra-Melin magic, but had not attained any of the three grades
of the Argentum Astrum. Their quarrels should have come as no surprise to anyone
as both were severely egocentric individuals who felt that the Golden Dawn would
function better as an autocratic order. The main disagreement between them was
that each felt the other incompetent to control the organization. The two
quarreled heatedly; nor were Crowley's quarrels limited to Mathers. Due to his
quarrels with various members of the Golden Dawn, Crowley and Mathers were both
expelled from the order and Crowley was forced to continue with the attainment
of Ipissimus on his own.
Crowley traveled widely in pursuit of his goal: studying eastern mysticism
(including Buddhism, Tantric yoga, and the I Ching); and living for a time in an
isolated setting near Loch Ness, Scotland. In 1903 he married Rose Kelley, who
bore him one child. Rose began to receive "communications from the astral plane"
and in 1904 told her husband that he was to receive an extremely important
message. It came from Aiwass, a spirit and Crowley's Holy Guardian Angel, or
True Self. Crowley later "identified" Aiwass (whose name seems to be a
bastardized version of the Norse word EIHWAZ which is the name of the rune that
symbolizes the yew tree, sheep, and the solving of problems) as a magical
current or solar phallic energy worshipped as Shaitan by the Sumerians, a "devil
god" (the only records extant of "shaitan" refer to it as a type of djinn
created by the fire of Allah that serves to guide the more creative side of man,
while the "guardian angel" serves more to guide the rational side of man), and
by the Egyptians as Set (who as the Egyptian deity of chaos and adversity bears
more in common with the Norse deity Loki than the inspirational shaitan). On
three consecutive days in April 1904, from noon until 1 p.m., Aiwass reportedly
manifested as a voice and dictated to Crowley The Book of the Law, perhaps the
most significant work of his magickal career and contains the Law of Thelema:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." (Gerald Gardener would modify
this law many decades later to create the Wiccan Rede). Though some have
interpreted this to mean that one can do as one pleases, other Crowley scholars
assert that this actually means doing what one must and nothing else. The Law of
Thelema is one of the greater points of controversy about Crowley: admirers see
it as distinguishing him as one of history's greatest magicians, detractors see
it as the ultimate proof of his mental decay.
Aiwass also heralded the coming of a new Aeon of Horus, the third great age of
humanity. The three ages were characterized as Paganism /Christianity/ Thelema
represented, respectively by Isis, Osiris, Horus. How Crowley could reconcile
his own Set like guardian working toward any goal of Horus, when the Egyptian
myths clearly showed that the sibling rivalry between Set and Horus was
extremely heated. Not surprisingly, Crowley considered himself the prophet of
the New Aeon.
From 1909 to 1913, Crowley published the secret rituals of the Golden Dawn in
his periodical The Equinox, which also served as a vehicle for his poetry. It
also served, perhaps predictably, to fan the flames of his long standing feud
with Mathers, who tried but failed to get an injunction to stop Crowley from
publishing what he considered "his" rituals. The main reason for Mather's
failure stems from the fact that although he had formed his own schism of the
Golden Dawn, he no longer spoke with their authority to back him, thus since he
and Crowley were both equal in the matter, the law would not find for him. By
1912, Crowley had become involved with the Ordo Templi Orientis, a German occult
order practicing magick.
In 1909 Crowley "explored" levels of the astral plane with his assistant, poet
Victor Neuberg, using the Enochian magick he had learned from the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn. He believed he had crossed the Abyss and united his
consciousness, thus becoming Master of the Temple. His descriptions of his
astral journey were published in The Vision and the Voice, published first in
The Equinox and then posthumously in 1949.
Crowley kept with him a series of of "scarlet women." The best known was Leah
Hirsig, known as "the Ape of Thoth", who indulged in drinking, drugs, and sexual
magick with Crowley, and who could sometimes "contact" Aiwass. Crowley attempted
several times to begat a "magickal child" by any of his scarlet women but never
succeeded. Not one to let adversity hold him back, he fictionalized his efforts
in the novel Moonchild, which he published in 1929.
From 1915 to 1919 he lived in the Crowley lived in the united States. In 1920 he
went to Sicily and founded the Abbey of Thelema, which he envisioned as a
magickal colony.
In 1921, when Crowley was 45, he and Hirsig conducted a ritual in which Crowley
achieved Ipissimus and became, according to his cryptic description, a god ("As
a God goes, I go."). He did not reveal attaining Ipissimus to anyone, only
hinting at it in his privately published Magical Record much later, in 1929.
After the transformation, however, Hirsig found him intolerable. Crowley later
discarded her and acquired a new scarlet woman, Dorothy Olsen.
In 1922, Crowley accepted an invitation to head the Ordo Templi Orientis. In
1923, the bad press that he routinely received led to his expulsion from Sicily,
thus forcing him to abandon his abbey. After a period of wandering through
France (during which he succumbed to the depths of heroin addiction), Tunisia,
and Germany (in 1929 he married his second wife, Maria Ferrari de Miramar, in
Leipzig,) he returned to England.
In later years he was plagued with poor health, drug addiction and financial
trouble. He kept himself afloat by publishing his writings, both nonfiction and
fiction. In 1945 he moved to a boardinghouse in Hastings, where he lived for the
last two years of his life, a dissipated shadow of his former vigorous self.
During these last years, he was introduced to Gerald Gardener by Arnold Crowther.
According to Gardener, Crowley told him he had been initiated into the Craft as
a young man. Crowley died in a private hotel in Hastings in 1947. His remains
were cremated and sent to his followers in the United States.
Crowley's other published books include: The diary of a Drug Fiend; Magick in
Theory and Practice, which many consider on of the best books on ceremonial
magick; The Stratagem, a collection of short stories; The Equinox of the Gods,
which sets forth The Book of the Law as mankind's new religion; and The Book of
Thoth, his interpretation of the Tarot Confessions originally was intended to be
a six-volume hagiography, but only the first two volumes were published. (This,
typically led to many arguments with the publishing company, which was taken
over by his friends and promptly went out of business). The remaining galleys
and manuscripts -- he had dictated the transcripts to Hirsig while under the
influence of heroin --were lost or scattered about. They were collected and
edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant and published in a single volume in
1969.
In some of his writings, Crowley referred to himself as "The Master Therion" and
"Frater Perdurabo" and began the practice of spelling magic as magick to
"distinguish the science of the Magi from all counterfeits. Some modern
occultists and most neo pagans follow that tradition to this day. Even those
that claim they do not follow any part of what Crowley wrote.