The Golden Dawn has been one of the major influences on the modern magician. Whether directly through them as a student or through people who once were members of the order, a large amount of magicians base much of their study and work on the orders’ material and conclusions. It seems also that a good majority of people are looking for the fast track to magical power and control, paying little to no attention to the origins of what they are trying to learn. Much of what today is understood as the “truth” of magic has its origins based on Golden Dawn teachings and its founders, members and other followers. Although, what a good number of these people seem to be missing is where people like Westcott, Mathers, Yeats, Waite and Crowley got their information, and how. Through these Golden Dawn members (and others), and the order itself, magic has been forever changed. From the inception of the Golden Dawn to its rise and success and all the way through the infighting and breakup of the order has taken its toll not only on the modern concept of magic, but also the mystery and grace that resides within it. It is my opinion, and that of many magicians, that the modern understanding of magic was deviated and corrupted during these times and has been making magical knowledge obscured and practice weaker over the years. In this article I will touch briefly on the founding of the Golden Dawn, their source materials, the structure of the order and what went on within it.

Timeline

1867 The SRIA was founded by William James Hughan and Robert Wentworth. A
member in that order by the name of Frederick Hockley was taught by a student of
Francis Barrett.
1872 Another important person, Kenneth MacKenzie joins the SRIA.
1873 Eliphas Levi becomes a member of the SRIA.
1880 William Wynn Westcott joins the SRIA.
1886 Kenneth MacKenzie dies and Westcott takes over his role as Grand Secretary of
the SRIA which gives him access to all of MacKenzie’s material.
1888 The Golden Dawn is created by Westcott, S.L Mathers and W.R Woodman.
1890 Annie Horniman, W.B Yeats and Florence Farr joined the order.
1891 The second order called Order of the Rosae Rubiae et Aurae Crucis (R.R. et A.C.)
was created. This pretty much made Mathers the new leader of the Golden Dawn. A.E
Waite joins the Order.
1896 The fights within the Order begin.
1898 A.Crowley joined the Order.
1900 The Order is falling apart because of the fighting.

After Mackenzie’s death, Westcott took over his position in the SRIA and found the famous cipher manuscript along with a note from Mackenzie. In this note there is an address to a Fraulein Sprengel. According to Westcott, he contacts this Sprengel woman through that address and gets confirmation to start the Golden Dawn order in
England. Fraulein Sprengel was to have already formed a German order called the Golden Dawn as well. Through Fraulein Sprengel the contact with the higher chiefs was established.

This sounds pretty solid at first and seems like a very official indoctrination of Englands new Golden Dawn order. It is believed that the story of this Fraulein Sprengel was a concoction to justify the order’s existence and give them merit in what were becoming the new occult circles. As of the writing of this article no person has been able to verify that Fraulein Sprengel ever existed.

Let us take a look at the source material that the Golden Dawn used. Remember that a lot of their knowledge and access at the time came through Mackenzie at the SRIA and that important members of the organization were heavily influenced by Francis Barrett. Barrett had written The Magus, and the members of the SRIA were basing most of their knowledge upon this book. It is now widely known and accepted that Barrett’s work was plagiarized from Agrippa’s (then not well known) Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

Barrett mixed large parts of Agrippa’s work with his own to create The Magus which is riddled with errors and inconsistencies and is considered one of the main influences in the Golden Dawn system.
It is also known that the regular members of the order did not have access to all material that the main members had access to. It turns out that Westcott sat on important material regarding Angelical Magic that never was known to Mathers. That means that they were left out of the material A. Crowley’s secretary and Regardie made public. One ponders whether this may be true for other material as well.

Westcott, the main founder of the Golden Dawn, had access to a lot of information. The order was created in 1888 and his position was taken by Mathers as early as 1891. Because of Westcott’s work he also had to withdraw from the order since it was not considered good practice to be dealing with the occult in his position and so his role in the order was limited to three years. Mathers was the main figure for the Golden Dawn during its inception. He joined the SRIA in 1882 and, it can be assumed, had no real knowledge of the occult before that. He translated a lot of books during this short time in the occult and it has been a rather sloppy or rushed work at best. We know today that the Abramelin work is missing several parts and including those that existed in the German manuscripts.

Much of the time Mathers had decided on what the reader could or could not handle which makes much of his translations questionable. Mathers and Crowley were, at the same time, in argument about these things with A.E Waite which is expressed in the forewords of their books. They were actually using their books to try and discredit A.E Waite as much as possible.

We now go on to A. Crowley who has influenced most modern magicians in one way or another. His origins were in the Golden Dawn and much of his thoughts and teachings are based on the time he spent in the Order. He joined the Order in November 1898 in the middle of all the fighting within the group. His entrance to the Inner Order was never accepted by the London office and then the organization basically fell apart during 1900, about a year after he joined. In August of 1899 Crowley had retreated to the Boleskin house to perform the incomplete version of the Abramelin rite that Mathers translated. He never finished the rite because Mathers demanded his presence. In April 1900 Mathers sends Crowley to take over the Inner Order’s property in London but he fails. This, in my opinion, marks the end of the original Golden Dawn. How much could he actually have learned during this time?

Considering all of this I find it strange that the Golden Dawn and its members have influenced so many modern magicians. What is it that appeals so much about this order to modern magicians? I have no idea. This information is for the most part even published on most of the modern Golden Dawn replicas who all claim to be coming from the original order. It is not like it is a big secret or anything.

2 Comments »

1. 

   Care Maetro Nestor,
   Thank you for a fine article. You are quite correct that Kenneth MacKenzie is the source of the Golden Dawn’s Cypher Manuscripts. There are a couple of important factual inaccuracies in this article, however. First of all, Kenneth MacKenzie was never the Supreme Magus of the SRIA. Wynn Wescott caused the rolls of the SIRA to be forged to make it look like MacKenzie was an SRIA founder, however.
   Wescott also invented the entire Anna Sprengel story to divert attention from MacKenzie as the source of the Cypher Manuscripts. All of this boils down to Wescott, as Supreme Magus of SRIA trying to appropriate MacKenzie’s Rosicrucian lineage for the SRIA! MacKenzie had been initiated as a Rosicrucian by Hungarian Count Apponyi in ca. 1852 in Austria. If you want to look for the true sources of the Golden Dawn, you have to look beyond MacKenzie and in the direction of Apponyi rather than to Frances Barrett’s book.
   Finally, you also overlook that S.L. MacGregor Mathers, despite the 1903 schism, continued the order in France under the name of the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega.
   Regards,
   David Griffin

   Comment by David Griffin — September 17, 2009 @ 22:39

2. 

   I am sorry that I have not seen your comment until now. You are right that a lot is missing and if I would have written this article today I would have added a lot of things. This article was actually written a couple of years ago and was just meant to get people thinking instead of just accepting things at face value. Thanks for some great pointers!

   Comment by Maestro Nestor — November 6, 2009 @ 08:22

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