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This article first appeared in the Occult Gazette in January I933 and has
not been available for a wider audience since. It is of particular relevance in
revealing D.F's considered opinion about The Golden Dawn as well as Aleister
Crowley.
 Dion Fortune If I read the signs of the times aright, the veil of the Temple of the
Mysteries is being drawn back at the present moment. There are phases in
thespiritual life of mankind just as there are weather cycles extending over
periods of years, and the tide which began to move during the first decade of
the twentieth century is gathering head as it proceeds.
The signs of the times are to be seen in the publication of certain books on
magic in which the genuine secrets are given, and given in a form available for
any reader with a capacity for metaphysical thoughts. Among the most important
of these are Israel Regardie's two books: The Garden of Pomegranates and The
Tree of Life. The Garden of Pomegranates, oddly enough, deals with the Tree of
Life, the famous glyph of the Cabbalists, which is used as a card index system
in which are filed all ideas concerning man and the Universe according to
certain well understood systems of association, and which by means of the
pattern of its arrangement, is used to discover the correspondences and
relationships between them.
The Cabbala is increasingly being recognized as the basis of Western
Occultism. Anyone who wants to appreciate esoteric philosophy as taught in that
system, and more especially anyone who wants to make practical use of it,
whether in magic or meditation, needs a working knowledge of the Tree of Life.
Information on this decidedly recondite subject has hitherto been to seek in a
number of books, some of them rare and hard to come by, and many of them
confused and elusive in their wording. Mr. Regardie has given, in a lucid and
concise form, and Messrs. Rider have issued at a moderate price, a most
admirable handbook on the technical system of the Tree. It is lucid,
comprehensive and concise, and performs a very useful service in correlating the
Cabbalistic, Eastern, and Egyptian systems. It is thus possible for the student
to trace out the interrelation between the two systems which are worked together
in the West, the Egyptian and Cabbalistic; and for the Theosophist to recognize
the classification with which he is familiar, when it is applied to the glyph of
the Tree in the technical methods of Western occultism.
 Israel Regardie Mr. Regardie has the inestimable advantage of knowing the Hebrew language; in
this, as an occultist, he is unique; for although most occultists working the
Western tradition have enough Hebrew to transliterate the Words of Power for
inscription on pentacles and talismans or for numerological work, they number no
Hebrew scholars among their ranks, but are all dependent on translations; even
MacGregor Mathers and Wynn Westcott did not translate from the original Hebrew
but from Latin versions, and they have saddled the Western schools with some
tiresome errors of transliteration and pronunciation.
Mr. Regardie gives a classification of the Tree and the constitution of man
according to the Cabbalists, and of the correspondences between them, which is
much more lucid and illuminating even than that given in McGregor Mathers'
admirable introductory essay to TheQabalah Unveiled, for he gives the
correspondences in terms of modern psychology as well as of metaphysics and the
psychic states. The sections of the book, however, which will be of chief
interest to students of the occult, and which will cause bitter heart burnings
in certain quarters, are his chapters on the attributions and correspondences of
the Ten Holy Sephiroth and the Twenty-two Paths between them.
These attributions have been among the special preserves of certain occult
schools; but Mr. Regardie gives them, even to the jealously guarded secret of
the correct attribution of the Tarot trumps. There will certainly be heart
burnings! Mr. Regardie does not specifically state his authorities, but it is
unquestionably the system taught in the "Order of the Golden Dawn", founded by
the late S. L. McGregor Mathers, that he is using.
If I have been a Rehoboam who has scourged occult secrecy with whips,
Mr. Regardie is a Jeroboam who is using scorpions! However, he has my
unqualified blessing, for what it is worth to him. There is no legitimate reason
that I have ever been able to see for keeping these things secret. If they have
any value as an aid to spiritual development, and I for one believe that they
have the highest value, there can be no justification for withholding them from
the world. The only reason of which I am aware, and one which I suspect of being
a weighty one with those who have so long sat resolutely upon the lid of occult
secrecy, is that for purposes of priest craft and prestige a secret system is a
useful weapon. A weighty reason, this, human nature being what it is, but not a
justification in the eyes of those who have the welfare of humanity at heart.
It has always been the custom of the "Golden Dawn" to wrap itself in the
utmost secrecy. To a certain extent this secrecy is unquestionably necessary,
for many eminent people have at different times belonged to the Order, and they
would not have dared to have done so if they could not have been sure of
preserving the secret of their interest in matters occult. Consequently the
strict secrecy concerning the names of members and the places of meeting was and
always will be essential. Secrecy is also necessary concerning initiation rites
if they are to be psychologically effective; for they should have an element of
surprise for the candidate; and the possession of their secrets, from which the
rest of the world is excluded, builds up a group mind out of the pooled
mentalities of the initiated brethren according to certain well-understood
psychological laws.
Secrecy concerning practical formulae of ceremonial magic is also advisable,
for if they are used indiscriminately, the virtue goes out of them. All these
formulae have unwritten astral workings attached to them; if they are used in
ignorance by the uninitiated, and without the astral workings, the magnetism
which has been worked up in the symbols is given off and not replaced; but when
they are used by the trained occultist, who performs the astral workings with
power, more magnetism is worked up than is given off, and the symbols become
stronger. That is why the old formulae, which have been used by generations of
trained adepts, are so extraordinarily powerful. Beyond this I do not think
occult secrecy ought to go, and I am certainly not prepared to assist it.
It is not possible to keep back the tide. Save for the reservations regarding
the actual rituals, the day of occult secrecy is over. Whosoever profit by the
teachings ought to have them. Mr. Regardie handles, very wisely, the section of
his book dealing with the ceremonial rites, for he gives the principles without
the actual formulae. The only formula he gives in full is that of the Banishing
Ritual of the Lesser Pentagram.
I was at first inclined to quarrel with him forgiving this, for one feels
instinctively that a formula which is messed about by all and sundry will not
long retain its value for anybody. But on second thoughts I am inclined to
acquit him. It is this formula which is given to the student immediately on
initiation, long before he is taught any practical working, in order that he may
be in a position to protect himself in case of astral trouble.
If Mr. Regardie is justified in drawing back the veil at all, then he is,
undoubtedly, justified in providing the necessary protection against anything
untoward that may come through that veil. The Lesser Pentagram is of the nature
of a fire extinguisher, and it is very necessary to have some such device handy,
when one adventures into such highly charged levels of the Unseen as are
contacted by the methods he describes.
Now what is going to be the outcome of this general disclosure of the secrets
of the Mysteries? As in most drastic happenings, the results will be mixed; but
it is my belief that the good will far outweigh the evil. That some folk will
burn their fingers experimenting with that which they do not understand I have
no doubt, but on the whole the gain to serious students will be inestimable. Mr.
Regardie has done his work admirably, both in the spirit and in the letter. The
Tree of Life is a book which it would be difficult to praise too highly; it is
going to be one of the classics of occultism. When the secrets of the Mysteries
are given forth in this manner and with this spirit, I, for one, decline to
believe that they are either betrayed or profaned, but rather that the author is
duly accredited to speak on behalf of Those who can bind or loose, irrespective
of tradition or, oaths of secrecy.
It is a curious fact that this is the third book of its kind to become
available at the present moment. I see from an article in the November number of
this magazine that Foyle's are issuing Crowley's Magick in a cheap edition, thus
rendering it available for the general student, who has probably never heard of,
or could not afford to purchase, the privately printed edition which appeared in
Paris a couple of years ago. The third person of this unholy trinity of
revealers of the Mysteries is my humble self, who has been doing much the same
thing as Mr. Regardie in a series of articles on the Cabbala which has been
running in my own magazine, The Inner Light.
I know that I undertook this work under a strong inner compulsion that this
teaching must now be given out to the world; that it was the will of Those
who held the keys that the door should be set open in these matters, and that we
were about to enter on an entirely new phase of occult activity. So far as I can
see, ceremonial magic is coming out into the open, as witness even the futile
operations of Mr. Harry Price on the Brocken, concerning which I had something
to say in a previous issue of the Occult Review. One does not see sporadic
manifestations of the same thing springing up here and there in entire
independence; they come from a common source. This source I believe to be one of
those high spring tides in things spiritual which, from time to time, visit our
earth. For any organization to try and close the sluice gates against it by
oaths of secrecy, is to keep back the Atlantic with a broom.
It is, therefore, important for those who have knowledge of the subject to
recognize the change which has taken place in the occult field, lest that field
be abandoned to the operations of quacks. Now that so much has been said by both
Regardie and Crowley, it is necessary to say a little more, and so elucidate the
whole situation. It must be obvious to anyone who compares them that The Garden
of Pomegranates and Tree of Life, by Regardie; Magick, by Crowley; and The
Mystical Qabalah, by myself, are all dealing with the same system, and the
question naturally arises, who has cribbed from which? The answer to this is
very simple; the system dealt with is not the private property of any one of us,
but is that which I have frequently referred to in my writings as the Western
Esoteric Tradition.
I have always been guarded in my references to this matter, because I took
some pretty stringent initiation oaths, and I do not care for the responsibility
of breaking those oaths; but, as previously noted, I have never pretended
ignorance of, or misled any one concerning matters that others had taken the
responsibility of making public. I have never had a taste for priest craft,
whatever other sins as chela or guru may justly be ascribed to me. Mr.
Regardie's revelation frees my hands considerably further, for it does not
appear to me that there is very much he has left unsaid.
I expect that the pontiffs of the mysteries will tell their neophytes that
his books are in accurate and incomplete; but I think they will find, after they
have served ten years for Leah and another ten for Rachel, as I was made to do,
that they are neither inaccurate nor incomplete, and a very great deal better
put together than the official knowledge papers and side lectures.
Now concerning the nature of these mysterious mysteries; as I have already
explained, I am wrapped up in oaths of secrecy like a cat in a fly paper, but I
do not feel that this debars me from quoting the published works of other
writers. When Mrs. McGregor Mathers, in her introduction to the second edition
of her husband's translation of The Qabalah Denudatarefers, in explicit terms,
to the mystery school he founded, and intimates that admission may be obtained
thereto by applying to her, care of her publishers, and when she publishes a
pamphlet for propaganda purposes in the United States which is even more
explicit, who am I that I should plead ignorance of the existence of such an
Order? And when W B. Yeats says, in his autobiography, that the Order founded by
Mr. Mathers was called the “Golden Dawn”, am I to pretend that I do not know
what the mysterious initials G. D. stand for? Am I also to pretend, in view of
what he has to say of his experiences while he was a member, and of the
confirmatory remarks of George Moore in his autobiographical book, Ave at que
Vale, that I do not know that the “Golden Dawn” concerns itself with ceremonial
magic? Does my initiation oath require me to deny these matters or to profess my
ignorance of them? If so, it requires me to tell lies.The "Golden Dawn" is
alleged to owe its origin to thediscovery by Mathers of a set of mysterious
ciphermanuscripts; these manuscripts exist, for I have talked with trustworthy
persons who have seen them; but as they were in cipher, they were not able to
bear testimony concerning their contents.
In these manuscripts Mathers is supposed to have found the outline of the
"Golden Dawn" rituals and the system of correspondences which is the key to its
teaching, including the correct attribution of the Tarot trumps on the Tree of
Life, which enables them to be linked Lip with the astrological signs, a secret
that students have long sought to discover. It is this system which Crowley uses
in his Equinox, 777, Book Four, and his recently published Magick; which
Regardie uses in both his books, and which I am using in my Mystical Qabalah,
now appearing serially in my own magazine.
We have none of us cribbed from each other, but have all drawn upon the
Mathers' manuscripts. I personally drew direct, because I possess these
manuscripts; but I did not take the responsibility of publishing them, or any of
their contents, but worked from Crowley's 777, as I acknowledged in my articles,
using my knowledge of the Mathers manuscript for counter checking purposes. I
may say that I found Crowley's books to be accurate. He himself does not
acknowledge his sources in his recently published Magick, but in his Equinox,
now out of print, he expressly declares that he is making public the "Golden
Damn" system as commanded by the Secret Chiefs. Regardie himself acknowledges
his indebtedness to the published works of Mathers, Wynn Westcott and Crowley;
but as Mathers and Wynn Westcott never put any of these correspondences into
their published works, and Regardie could not have been in direct touch with the
G. D. or he would have known it was not defunct, I conclude he has drawn his
information from Crowley's "A.A", which is simply the G. D. system under another
name or so it appears to me to be from what its founder says about it.
Thus I think we may claim to have traced out this system of correspondences
and its antecedents: Crowley and I drew direct from Mathers "Golden Dawn", and
Regardie drew from Crowley's "A. A". The next point we have to solve in
unraveling our mystery is the relationship of the different characters in this
drama to each other. Crowley and Mathers quarreled. Exactly why, I do not know;
incompatibility of temperament was probably the fundamental cause, whatever the
actual occasion of their break may have been. Crowley then started the
publication of his magazine, The Equinox, which came out twice yearly for five
years in England and made afresh start in America after the War with one volume,
but never got any further. These eleven volumes are highly prized by the more
advanced students of occultism, and the complete set is hard to come by and
commands high prices. Some of the contents, however, have been reprinted in
Magick, together with a certain amount of new material.
In this magazine Crowley deliberately gave away all that he possessed of
Mathers' secrets, including some of his rituals, and tore Mathers' character to
shreds. I have never met either of the persons concerned in this dispute, but it
appears to me that the abuse Crowley heaps on Mathers in the pages of his
magazine is far more likely to reflect on himself than it is upon Mathers. In
his criticisms of the manner in which Mathers conducted his organization he is,
I think, upon surer ground, for I found exactly the same problems confronting me
when I myself joined it some years after he left.
Practical teaching from official sources was conspicuous by its absence, and
unless one was lucky enough to have a personal friend among its members with a
gift of exposition, one was left high and dry. One was put through the
ceremonies, given the bare bones of the system in the knowledge lectures and a
few commentaries on them called side lectures, for the most part of very
inferior quality, and left to one's own devices.
The glory had departed in the days when I knew the Order, for most of its
original members were dead or withdrawn; it had suffered severely during the
war, and was manned mainly by widows and grey bearded ancients; and the widows
of its founders were somewhat in the position of the widow of a certain famous
artist when she was asked if meant to carry on her husband's business.
The cloak of Elijah did not necessarily descend on Mrs. Elishah.
Nevertheless, anyone with any psychic perceptions at all could not fail to
realize that there was power in the ceremonies and formulae; and anyone who made
a study of them also speedily found out that in the system of correspondences
taught in the G. D. they had got something of inestimable value.
Frater Perdurabo's Book of Lies Frater Perdurabo on the Deosai Plateau End of
his first Himalayan Expedition (Aleister Crowley pictures himself on a donkey in
his Book of Lies 1913) These correspondences which were scattered through the
knowledge papers of the G. D. inextricable confusion, for Mathers seemed to have
a peculiar gift for putting his teaching in the most inassimilable form possible
(perhaps due to too much reading of Rabbinical literature), were sorted out and
assembled in readily available form by Crowley and published in his book777.
This book is now out of print, but the more important of its contents are
reprinted in the fourth volume of Magick. It is this book which I made use of
for my Mystical Qabalah and Iimagine that Regardie also used it for his Garden
of Pomegranates. He has drawn very extensively upon Crowley's writings for his
inspiration and information, and so much controversy has centred around the
personality of that extraordinary man, that it is only fair to Mr. Regardie to
quote a passage in which he explains his attitude in the matter.
He says, on page 40, of The Tree of Life: “It will be noted that I have
quoted freely from Aleister Crowley, and it is imperative clearly to define my
attitude towards this man of genius....It is a pity, as I see it, that the
public should be robbed of that superlative freshness and originality which are
his, and deprived of those aspects of his teaching which are fine, ennobling and
enduring, simply because of a certain proportion of his literary output which is
certainly banal, petty, unimportant, and, no doubt, very reprehensible. The
personalities and private lives of these individuals concern me not at all, and
I do not feel disposed to discuss them."
This, in my opinion, is the right attitude to adopt in the matter. I do not
think any educated person will dispute the statement that a man's literary work
should be judged impartially as literature, and that his character should not
weigh in the balance, either for or against.
Ovid and Byron both had to leave their country for their country's good, but
that does not prevent their writings being reckoned as great literature. In a
hundred years' time, when the controversies concerning his personality have died
down, Crowley will be recognized, quite apart from his occult work, as a great
English writer of both prose and poetry. The man whose work finds inclusion in
The Oxford Book of Mystical Verse can meet the jeers of even such an eminent
critic as G. K. Chesterton on a level. Although Crowley's writings are marred by
the grossest ribaldry and the foulest personal abuse, they are the works of a
man of genius and a writer of magnificent English, and it is a great loss to
occult literature that they are not available for the general reader.
There could be no more valuable contribution to the occult movement than a
collected edition of the works of this very great writer, edited and annotated
by some such sympathetic hand as that of Mr. Regardie, and with the
personalities cut out, To speak any word in mitigation of the general
condemnation of Crowley is a thankless task, for panic stricken people
immediately conclude that one is in league with the devil. Nevertheless Mr.
Regardie has had the courage to do this, and I should like to add my voice to
his. To make use of a man's work without acknowledgment is no better than
picking pockets.
As the "Golden Dawn" “The A.A." and my own "Inner Light" must appear to the
uninformed observer to be more or less mixed up together, I feel it is advisable
to disentangle them. The deeper issues of occultism are evidently going to come
out into the open in the near future; therefore a clearing of the ground is
imperative. It may be as well to explain my own position in relation to the
"Golden Dawn`. I joined the southern branch of the Scottish section of it, since
disbanded, in 1919, and transferred from there to the section of it of which
Mrs. McGregor Mathers was the head, and which claimed the only orthodoxy. She
nearly turned me out for writing The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage,
on the grounds that I was betraying the inner teaching of the Order, but it was
pointed out to her that I had not then got the degree in which that teaching was
given, and I was pardoned. She suspended me for some months for writing Sane
Occultism, and finally turned me out because certain symbols had not appeared in
my aura a perfectly unanswerable charge.
However, I transferred again to yet another section of the Order, where, for
the first time, I saw justice done to what is, in my opinion, a very great
system, and continued my studies without interruption. The Fraternity of the
Inner Light" was founded by me in agreement with Mrs. Mathers, to be an Outer
Court to the "Golden Dawn" system. All went well at first, and I was in high
favor; but presently I fell from grace; why I never knew. No specific charges
were ever made against me, save that of not having the proper symbols in my
aura. Finally I was turned out without reason assigned, save the ridiculous one
above.
My experiences, when I persisted in using the Order system, I have related in
Psychic Self-Defence. Unpleasant as those experiences were, the fact remains
that Mrs. Mathers' rejection of me did not close the gates of the Order to me on
either the outer or the inner planes. I personally believe that the Temples of
the Mysteries are not houses made with hands, but are eternal in the heavens. I
no more believe McGregor Mathers' story of meeting mysterious adepts in the Bois
de Boulogne than I believe Leadbeater's stories of the Masters and their marble
seats.
There is not only folly, but fraud in confusing the planes, and representing
that which was experienced subjectively as having actually happened in the world
of matter. I have given my life to occultism since I was a young girl, and
everything I have seen and experienced, on both the inner and the outer planes,
points away from any centralized human organization. I have seen the most
extravagant claims made on behalf of some such Great White Lodge or Temple of
the Illuminati, especially by certain American enterprises, for I refuse to call
them occult orders; but I have never seen them substantiated. In fact, those who
are loudest in their claims give out teaching which would disgrace a patent
medicine circular. By their fruits ye shall know them and the fruits of these
self styled adepti are bilious concoctions.
The eternal temple in the heavens, however, is another matter and innumerable
witnesses, of every age and faith, have borne witness to its existence; but they
all declare that it is reached in vision, and not by any journey into the
wilderness, however remote. It is to this eternal temple, and the Masters who
rule therein, that I personally look for my inspiration and my authority to
initiate. Whatever system I use is a means to an end and nothing more. I value
tradition, however, because I find it to possess a psychic efficacy which is
lacking in original systems, however theoretically correct or aesthetically
beautiful they may be.
It is my belief that Mathers got the keys to his system from the mysterious
manuscripts, and that these connect up with the genuine European tradition whose
symbol is the Rose on the Cross, and concerning which so little is known. I
cannot prove this statement on the physical plane, because I have never been
allowed a sight of those manuscripts or any opportunity to test the statements
that are current in the Order concerning its origin; but from the psychic
experiences I have had in connection with the "Golden Dawn" I have formed the
above opinion, for what my opinion may be worth, and I may say that I have had a
fairly wide range of experience in practical occultism.
It seems to me that whoever can work the system of the "Golden Dawn` in such
a manner as to pick up the contacts of the Secret Chiefs need not pay very much
attention to the "Trespassers will be prosecuted” boards put up on the physical
plane by persons who are not altogether disinterested. The system, when worked
by competent persons, is effectual, whether they are chartered or not. But even
the "Golden Dawn" system, when worked by incompetent persons, is ineffectual, as
I know to my cost. It is not advisable however, for persons with no experience
of practical occultism to make their first experiments with no other guidance
than that of a book. Preliminary training is necessary; also a guide with a rope
in case of difficulties. But those who have already passed through the Outer
Court and stand waiting at the Door Between the Pylons will find, in Mr.
Regardie's books, the keys they need. I, for one, wish them Godspeed on their
Journey; and may they find the Stone of the wise; the Summum Bonum; true wisdom;
perfect happiness. Dione Fortune
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