Red herrings regarding the higher teachings of the A∴O∴ and its true Third Order

Pat Zalewski made some comments about MacGregor Mathers’ Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega, the senior Grades and one hypothesis about the Third Order, back on the reconstructionist yahoo-forum a week ago, which has come to my attention just recently and that needs some further problematization on my behalf. I will address these issues as briefly as I can, as I don’t want to repeat myself; therefore you must indulge me to provide you with some links to previous postings by me on this blog. Now, Mr. Zalewski starts off saying, that:

In the enochian system, the tablets and serviant squares were ZAM [Zelator Adeptus Minor] and the Kerubics at THAM [Theoricus Adeptus Minor]. The calvary cross was most likely at PAM [Practicus Adeptus Minor] and the central cross at PhAM [Philosophus Adeptus Minor] and the Tablet of Union at AAM [Adept Adeptus Minor]. On the ritual study since the ZAM was a study of the 0=0 and the THAM a study of the 1=10 the rest of 5=6 sub-grades would be taken up by the elemental ritual. That leaves the Portal and 5=6 to be analysed, and that was most likely done at 6=5 and 7=4 level- if we follow the GD pattern. I very much doubt that any of this was followed through on.

While Mr. Zalewski is quite correct that the Second Order of the original Order of the G∴D∴ and the Rosicrucian Order of A∴O∴ seperated the in depth analysis of the Kerubic Squares from the Z.A.M. curriculum and reserved it for the Th.A.M., the rest is speculation on Mr. Zalewski’s behalf regarding the P.A.M., Ph.A.M., and A.A.M. sub-grades and the Enochian teachings, although there is some merit and logic to his suggestions. Regarding Elemental Grade analysis, I agree with Mr. Zalewski that this is most likely and that as the 1°=10° was the study of a Th.A.M., the 2°=9° should have been the study of a P.A.M., the 3°=8° of a Ph.A.M. and the 4°=7° of a A.A.M. However, we do not know if the Portal Grade also was not part of the A.A.M. curriculum.

I personally doubt though that the 5°=6° was supposed to be analysed at all in that same manner; the Ritual of the Portals perhaps, as it follows the same pattern as that of the Elemental Grades. But regarding the 5°=6° I seriously doubt this as it is of an entirely different nature. We know that the Ritual of the Portals was the precursor to the later 5°=6° Ritual, which created the first nominal Adepti Minori; although them two later becoming attached, the Ritual of the Portals being a species of preliminary “ritual of the paths” which lead the aspirant to the Vault of the Adepti, they are of entire different matters altogether. While the Ritual of the Portals belongs to the same type of rituals as that of the Elemental Grades, the 5°=6° belongs to entirely different types of rituals which sets it (and the other senior Adepti Grade Rituals) apart from the Outer Order formula.

What we also do know is that its symbolism was analysed in The Book of the Tomb, on an relatively early level of the study of the Minor Adept, perhaps even at the level of Neophyte Adeptus Minor. (There exists an entirely different analysis, similar to that of the Book of the Tomb, attached as an appendix to the A∴O∴ 5°=6° Ritual, which suggests this.) I seriously doubt that senior Adepts such as Westcott was priviliged to any higher knowledge of what was actually going on in the 5°=6° Ritual, beyond the obvious and its symbology; that knowledge was reserved for the Third Order initiates such as MacGregor Mathers who understood it in the light of the rituals of the 6°=5° and 7°=4°, which are part of an entire and interlinked initiatic cycle. Beyond this information, I cannot venture any deeper into this subject matter without breaching initiatic secrets; I have given you enough hints to understand that it is impossible to “analyse” the 5°=6° Ritual in the same manner as you will find it in Mr. Zalewski’s Golden Dawn Rituals and Commentaries. Thus I do agree with Mr. Zalewski that not that much was followed through on. Then Mr. Zalewski continues:

The GD tarot for the AO was never completed and they used the S[tella] M[atutina] cards -from what I was told. Enochian chess was never finished nor the governors of the tablets nor the seal. There was a great deal left undone.

As I said, I tend to agree with Mr. Zalewski on this one, that a great deal was left undone. However, his suggestion that the A∴O∴ initiates were using Felkin’s version from the Stella Matutina is quite ludicrous. If anything, the initiates of the A∴O∴, as was the case with that of the original G∴D∴, were using the current published decks, such as Papus’ The Tarot of the Bohemians which my earlier short essay on the confusion of Strength vs. Justice attributions suggests. I am also quite content in believing that the G∴D∴ and later the A∴O∴ used Tarot Keys drawn up for the various Rituals used in the Temple and Vault. However, I do agree with Mr. Zalewski that it was not very likely that these Keys were copied to any greater extent by the initiates themselves. However, this doesn’t at all suggest that an entire esoteric Tarot Deck was not existent in the A∴O∴. Mr. Zalewski then continues:

I tend to side with Nick Farrell on the higher levels of the AO under Mathers. If Berridge only reached 6=5 then it very in the AO few made it to 7=4, only chiefs. Tony Fullers Idea (which he delivered a paper on some years ago at the first GD conference) of the Sun order being a defacto Third order of the GD has much merit. As far as those GD members were concerned, in all probability what was lacking in the GD and AO could be found in the material in the Sun order. So there was no real need to go to the higher GD levels to obtain this information when the Sun order provided it.

If Tony Fuller once held this highly speculative idea, it seems he doesn’t any more. I don’t blame him for changing his mind as this idea about the Sun Order (also known as he Cromlech Temple) being the Third Order of the G∴D∴ is even more ludicrous than then previous one. The Sun Order was originally an entirely different Order, which saw dual membership between the A∴O∴ and the Sun Order as beneficent. Some of its teachings of the Aura seems to interact quite well with the teachings in the G∴D∴ regarding the Sphere of Sensation. However, this doesn’t at all mean that the Sun Order was an acting Third Order for the A∴O∴. At the very most, the Sun Order and its Cromlech Temple served to be a species of “side degrees”, which is a quite common concept in Freemasonry. That is, degrees which is not required but is regarded to bee looked in favour to further the understanding of the formal degrees.

Thus, to a certain degree, the Adepti of the A∴O∴ could have regarded the Sun Order to act as a side order, adding some to the core teachings of the R.R. et A.C. This is also a analysis which I seem to share with the late Francis King, the author of Ritual Magic in England which was the first literary work discussing and publishing Sun Order material. Besides, nothing suggests that anything produced in the Cromlech Temple relevant to the A∴O∴ reached any higher Grade than that of the 7°=4°, which negates it being any “Third Order” which obviously operates Grades beyond that of the Adeptus Exemptus. I already addressed this topic four years ago in my essay on the sexual teachings of the Alpha et Omega and its supposed relation to the Cromlech Temple and already then concluded that the Sun Order is a dead end in understanding the Third Order of the G∴D∴ and A∴O∴.

According to the same Mr. Fuller which Mr. Zalewski cites as a source for his own pet theories, MacGregor Marthers had set up an “Adept Collage” which consisted of the R.R.et A.C. and the Sun Order as the “two Sister Rosicrucian Orders in Britannia”; thus the Sun Order wasn’t regarded to be superior to but equal to the R.R et A.C. (Second Order) of the A∴O∴, which negates it being put upon any pedestal (i.e. a Third Order). Even Mr. Fuller himself was much hesitant in 2008 to assert that this was a general attitude within the A∴O∴, although some Adepts of the S∴M∴ might have believed this to be true. I went over all of this in 2008 and my short essay entitled The Amity of the Alpha et Omega and the Stella Matutina, and in 2009 in my follow-up on the higher teachings of the Alpha et Omega and the Solar Order. Finally, Mr. Zalewski choses to write thus:

I's [sic.] like to add one very important point here about Astral masters in the SM and Sun Order. Felkin’s chiefs of the Sun Order (some call the Sun masters) were also spitting information on the GD as well. The Sun masters were interchangeable with the GD guides.

This is a pure speculation on behalf of Mr. Zalewski. I doubt that Felkin had anything to do with the Cromlech Temple at the time of his “Sun Masters” phase. This confusion between the Sun Order and the “Sun Masters” has also been suggested by Nick Farrell in his book King over the water, which I have addressed in a review. It’s pure coincidence; the reference to the Sun being of such a universal significance that this kind of confusion is easily made. Mr. Fuller suggests that even Felkin himself later made this confusion. This entire subject of astral masters has nothing whatsoever to do with the real Secret Chiefs of the true Third Order, which is the custodian of the ancient teachings of Internal Alchemy. Nothing contained in the teachings of neither the Sun Order nor the “Sun Masters” suggest any connection to these ancient alchemical teachings. Thus, Mr. Zalewski’s suggestions, faithfully “corroborating” that of Mr. Farrell’s, is simply a red herring. Nothing more.

S∴R∴

The confusion of Strenght vs. Justice attributions

© Sincerus Renatus

NICK FARRELL today published a page from a Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega (A∴O∴) Knowledge Lecture coming from the “Nisi” collection, so-called, which he used to profane the A∴O∴ corpus in his two latest anti-A∴O∴ polemics Mathers’ Last Secret and King over the Water. The page in question presents the 22 Tarot Keys showed in a sequence that seems to astonish Mr. Farrell, because as No. 8 we see “Justice” and as No. 11 “Fortitude”.

This arrangement obviously breaks the usual Golden Dawn method of attributing No. 8 to “Fortitude” / “Strenght” and No. 11 to “Justice”.

However, again we see the typical example of Mr. Farrell overreacting, or trying to create a hen out of a feather to create yet another “sensation”. Just take a look at the published Knowledge Lectures from the Stella Matutina (Regardie) and the Golden Dawn (Torrens), and you will immediately spot the ambiguity of the attributions. It often says “Strenght (Justice)” and “Justice (Strenght)”, just to show that these Keys have a double attribution.

Actually the traditional (i.e. pre-Golden Dawn) sequence is as in the A∴O∴ table profaned by Mr. Farrell. However, the sequence of the Hebrew Alphabet creates an alternative order, where Teth = Strenght and Lamed = Justice. This is shown in the Knowledge Lectures as well, however in a later one compare to the one profaned by Mr. Farrell, the one belonging to the Practicus Grade to be more precise.

This same ambiguity can also bee seen in the titles of the Honours, i.e. King, Queen, Knight and Knave, vs. King, Queen, Prince and Princess, where a King = Knight and Prince = King, even throwing in an “Emperor” to the mixture in the Stella Matutina Knowledge Lecture (as published by Regardie) to create a total confusion to the Outer Order member.

It is only in the Second Order that this confusion is finally resolved, when the Hebrew (for the Keys) and the Colour Scales (i.e. King, Queen, Prince & Princess) takes precedence, as it was only in the Second Order that the initiate started to use the Tarot as a Magical Tool, that is in the previous Reformation anno 1888.

Paul Foster Case, being an initiate of the Rosicrucian Order of A∴O∴ surely knew the initiated attributions of the 22 Keys, placing No. 8 as Strenght and No. 11 as Justice, which clearly shows that this teaching never was removed from the A∴O∴ in the first place (see images above).

What Farrell has published is a Knowledge Lecture belonging to the Grade of Zelator. But in the Practicus Ceremony (i.e. two Grades later), as well as its attached Kowledge Lecture, this ambiguity is presented in full in both the G∴D∴, A∴O∴ and S∴M∴, using both titles together with the attached Hebrew letter, as shown above.

The way that the A∴O∴ presented the ambiguity and double attributions of the Tarot, made it less confusing for the student of the Outer Order, presenting the traditional sequence in theory, while the magical sequence was reserved for practical application only for the Adept, and previously only hinted at in relation to the Hebrew Alphabet.

Addendum August 30, 2012

In the debate ensuing it has been pointed out that in the A∴O∴ Adeptus Major ceremony, as lately profaned, Justice is numbered as No. 8, while the astrological Sign of Libra has been retained. I must also point out that not only is Libra retained, but the Hebrew letter Lamed as well. This is highly significant as it is the sequence of the Hebrew letters and their numerations which is of primary importance in the understanding of the Tarot Keys, and which explains the apparent ambiguity, which is also brought out in the A∴O∴ Adeptus Major ceremony.

Let me quote a small part of that ceremony (profaned), of which I own a personal copy handed down to me through official channels from a Adeptus Exemptus, and which has been brought to our attention (and as lately also wrongfully portrayed and presented by individuals who cannot understand its proper context and sub-message, and therefore prompted me to bring it out in full):

…the Grade of Adeptus Major… is connected with the Grade of Adeptus Minor…, by the 22 Path, the attributions of which are to the Letter Lamed, to the Zodiacal Sign Libra, the Balance, and (in place of the Eleventh) to the Eight Key of the Tarot… […] Wherefore, also, thou wilt understand that the Eight Key of the Tarot, as assigned unto this Path, represent Eternal Truth, Justice, and Equilibrium, and governeth alike the Seasons, the Forces of Nature, and the Infinite Variety and Mutability of Things.

It is preferable to refer the Eleventh Key of Strength to the 19th Path and to Leo: and this Eight Key of Justice to Libra: although at one time the Sword of Justice might be referable as the Egyptian Seimitar to the so-called Sickle of Leo (the stars in the for part of that Constellation): and the Scales to the idea of the Sun having just quitted the Balance-Point of his Highest Elevation at the Summer Solstice. Similarly, in the Eleventh Key, the Woman closing the Mouth of the Lion or a Dragon: or the Chelae or Front Claws of Scorpio (by which name the Sign of Libra was sometimes called) would represent Venus, Lady of Libra, repressing the Fire of Vulcan upon the Fire-Altar, the ancient name of the Constellation Vulcan, shown by Saturn exalted in Libra.

As it happens, even the Cypher Mss., the source document of any Order or Temple claiming to be part of the Golden Dawn Tradition, attributes the 22nd Path, Libra, Lamed and Justice to Key No. VIII (8), whereas the 19th Path, Leo, Teth and Strength is attributed to Key No. XI (11). (See attached image below of the Cypher Mss.) Now read the following part of the Tarot Lecture of the Practicus, as extracted from the Cypher Manuscripts:

VIII Justice = Lamed and Libra, and XI Strength = Teth and Leo which causeth a transposition for these are cognate symbols but at one time the sword of Justice was the Egyptian knife symbol of the sickle of Leo while the scales meant the Sun having quitted the balance point of highest declination. To the female and the lion gave the idea of Venus, Lady of Libra, repressing the fire of Vulcan (Saturn in Libra exalted). But earliest was the lion goddess to Leo and Ma[at] to Libra with her scales. And this is better.

So, as is clearly seen here in comparing these two source documents, and in particular the highlighted part, that passage in the A∴O∴ Adeptus Major ceremony is a paraphrase of the Practicus lecture taken from the Cypher Mss! So what the A∴O∴ did was that it was adhering to the teachings of the foundational text of the Golden Dawn, and not to anything proposed by Papus as has been suggested (only because he was befriended with S.L. MacGregor Mathers and a brief member of the Ahathoor Temple in Paris). 

A folio of the Cypher Mss. showing Tarot attributions

 
I am not a gambling man, but I would bet quite a lot that the original Golden Dawn documents (pre 1900) corroborates what was taught and circulated in the later A∴O∴. I firmly believe that also in this case the G∴D∴ and A∴O∴ are concordant. Not strange considering that the A∴O∴ was the natural continuation of the G∴D∴ under a new name.

To summarize, the correct Tarot enumeration is No. VIII for Justice and No. XI for Strength, while Teth and Leo is attributed to Strength / Fortitude, and Lamed and Libra to Justice, placing Strength after the Chariot and before the Hermit, and Justice after the Wheel of Fortune and before the Hanged Man in the alphabetic sequence. But to simplify things, and to alleviate the possible confusion of a higher number preceding a lower in the sequence, Strength also appropriated No. VIII and Justice No. XI, both in the G∴D∴, A∴O∴ and S∴M∴. Thus both number attributions are correct! 

Addendum September 1, 2012

Nick Farrell, obviously referring to my writing as representing a “modern reconstructions of the AO”, made this refutation a couple of days ago on a truly reconstructionist yahoo-group:

It has been said that Mathers was saying that it was possible to use both options, however he never did that before in any of the material he wrote. It should remembered that in early GD and SM knowledge papers there was no mention of an “either or.” Students, were told that Key 8 was Strength and Key 11 was Justice. This was mirrored by Book T. In Nisi it is clear that in the AO were told that only the traditional system was right. Mathers is not giving anyone two options. However they would have been confused.

This is either a clear attempt by Mr. Farrell at conscious disinformation, or a show of his utter ignorance in this matter. I suggest that he should check again in his resourses on the Practicus Ceremony and attached Knowledge Lecture, where it clearly says in the G∴D∴, A∴O∴ and S∴M∴ versions: “Strength (Justice)” and “Justice (Strength)”. This is verified by Israel Regardie and his profanation of that said Knowledge Lecture in The Golden Dawn (see attached image below). I have access to the historical A∴O∴ corpus from Ahathoor Temple (the Mother Temple of the A∴O∴), and it is obvious that MacGregor Mathers presented two options.

As has already been pointed out to Mr. Farrell by more reasonable and moderate members on that said yahoo-group, S.L. MacGregor Mathers retained the traditional numbering of the Tarot Keys but placed them in the ordering sequence after the Hebrew Letters, which made No. XI appear before No. VIII. This is seen in the majority of the tabulations and on the attributions on the Tree of Life, for example as seen in Aleister Crowley’s profanation of the Tree of Life symbol (as taken from the “Portal Ceremony”) in the “White Equinox” Vol. 1, No. 2 and the G∴D∴ “Book T” in Vol. 1, No. 8. This last example of Crowley’s references substantiates the hypothesis that it was a common practice also in the original G∴D∴, pre A∴O∴.

The most probable reason behind this was that most Tarot Decks at the time (in particular Papus’ Tarot of the Bohemians) were using this older sequence of the Keys, and that the initiates of the G∴D∴ and A∴O∴ used these published decks, while at the same time being aware of the true attribution and sequence, i.e. transposing them placing No. XI before No. VIII. This is clearly hinted at already in the Practicus Ceremony which says the following:

This shows the true and genuine attribution of the Tarot trumps to the Hebrew alphabet which has long been a secret among the Initiates and which should be carefully concealed from the outer world.

Finally Mr. Farrell writes the following attack on the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega that I represent:

What I find even more surprising is that no one seemed to know this. Even modern reconstructions of the AO who are supposed to have papers from the original Order are claiming that the AO allowed both ideas to work side by side at the same time. But the only paperwork which says what the AO did that has been shown is mine.

This is the height of presumption and arrogance to assume that no-one knew this in our Order! We do in fact have access to the A∴O∴ teachings on this, and have for as long as I can almost remember, but as there are so many modern decks out there, most notable the Raider-Waite (the most common today) and the B.O.T.A. / Paul Foster Case (which I personally prefer over Raider-Waite), not to mention the various G∴D∴ Decks, which all assign Strength to No. VIII and Justice to No. XI, there is no need to emphasise the older numeration any more, besides a brief mention of the historical transposition. However aesthetically appealing, this is why I don’t recommend Crowley’s Thoth Deck as it uses the old placement, not to mention transposing Tzaddi and Heh in the Star and Emperor Keys.

I really don’t understand all the fuss Mr. Farrell and the others are making....

S∴R∴

First Part of a critical review: King over the Water (or the art of legitimising a schism)

Introduction

KING OVER THE WATER was published as a companion to Mathers’ Last Secret, which I have already reviewed in two parts on this blog last year entitled Historical Revisionism in the Golden Dawn – Part 1 and Part 2 of a critical review of ‘Mathers’ Last Secret’. These two books must be seen as two parts of one and the same work, with different perspectives on the same subject and with the same agenda, to detract the value of the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega and its former Archon Basileus, S.L. MacGregor Mathers. While King over the Water mainly is a book that makes a historical survey of the life and works of MacGregor Mathers and his successors, Mathers’ Last Secret expounds on the rituals of the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega.

As can be seen in my review in that latter book Mr. Farrell proposes two main ideas, that (a) MacGregor Mathers took the initiation rituals of the Golden Dawn Tradition into a Masonic direction, stripping it off from all Magic, and that (b) he changed the same rituals into Magically barring the initiate from a full spiritual development. The attentive reader will of course notice that ‘a’ contradicts ‘b’. One may summarize this work precisely as that, full of inconsistencies and logical holes; it says more about the author than it does about the subject; the bias of the author becomes very apparent. As is to be expected, Mr. Farrell repeats these major talking points in King over the Water. However, I will not refute them here again as I already have done that in my pervious review in a sufficient manner.

The companion to KOTW

In my critical review of Mathers’ Last Secret I have given ample evidence which takes Mr. Farrell’s outrageous propositions apart, one by one, drawing on both intellectual analysis but also on my own one and a half decades of experience of these rituals profaned in that book. In my previous review I also gave ample evidence that Mr. Farrell consciously tries to damage the reputation of the historical Alpha Omega in order to elevate the historical Order of the Stella Matutina and its New Zeeland Temple Whare Ra. In this manner Mr. Farrell has proved to us that he is not a trustworthy person in delineating the history of the A∴O∴ as he is strongly biased against it. He is not credible as an historian as he has interests in defending the honour of the Stella Matutina which schismed against MacGregor Mathers. To justify the treacherous actions that the rebels of the Isis-Urania Temple took against MacGregor Mathers in 1900, which he is very well aware to be a great breach of Order protocol, he has to uphold the image of the autocratic and mischievous leader. Not only does he paint a picture of MacGregor Mathers as an evil villain who resorts to magically attacking the candidate during his initiations, but also as someone who lacks any magical skill or occult understanding, and a complete loony just to be sure. Being such, the only decent action by any righteous Adept was to rid him from his office as Chief.

Being a brief student of one of the former Chiefs of the Whare Ra Mr. Farrell feels obliged to uphold its integrity against the prevailing positive and admirable opinions about Mathers’ Alpha Omega. Considering himself to be an heir of that New Zeeland lineage he of course tries to uphold his own and that of his Order’s current against the contemporary heirs of Mathers’ A∴O∴. But there is also another layer to all of this, namely that there seems to be a general agenda in the Golden Dawn community to debunk any value at all to MacGregor Mathers. We have seen this being proposed in another book delineateing the so-called “Westcott Tablets”, which as an appendix published a part of the A∴O∴ 6°=5° ritual with bears no relevance at all to the overall topic of the said book. It is interesting though to notice that in that book, which profaned the 6°=5° ritual, the authoress totally debunks the creative genius of MacGregor Mathers and installs W.W. Westcott in his place.

Westcott, the genius of the G∴D∴?

This all smells as the handiwork of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.) which has everything to gain from debunking MacGregor Mathers and elevating Westcott in his stead. Westcott was the third Supreme Magus of the S.R.I.A., and a quite venerated chief amongst its members at that. As it happens, the authoress of the book on the “Westcott Tablets” is also the current Supreme Magus (or Maga) of the Societas Rosicruciana in America. She runs a competing Golden Dawn Order together with her husband, who happens to be a member of the S.R.I.A. (in England) after being sponsored by R. A. Gilbert. Furthermore, Gilbert was one of the founders of the English based Order of the Rose and Cross (O.R+C), which happened to have himself, as well as the S.R.I.America Supreme Maga and her husband, as listed Officers. I will quote the pertinent parts of that list which was originally appended to a “manifesto”, possible written by R. A. Gilbert himself (judging from its style and character), of which I will quote a part in a later section of this review:

Grand Exponent

Husband of the Grand 2nd Ancient, IX°

Grand Archivist

R.W. Fra. Robert Gilbert, IX°

Grand Tutor

R.W. Fra. Robert Gilbert, IX°

Grand 2nd Ancient

Authoress of the book on the Westcott Tablets, VIII°

Grand 3rd Ancient

V.W. Fra. Nick Farrell, VI°

As you can see from this list, Nick Farrell also serves (or at least has served) as an O.R+C officer with the rank of Adeptus Major VI°. Mr. Farrell was a high ranking Adept of the Golden Dawn Order governed by the Supreme Maga and her husband as well, for at least a decade until he officially “left” their Order a couple of years ago to found his own, and in the process freeing himself from the restrictions of the Trademark Settlement Agreement not to mention anything of the other party of that agreement. Thus a “back door” was created in the process. Conveniently Mr. Farrell published Mathers’ Last Secret and King over the Water under the auspices of his new Order.

Westcott as the S.R.I.A. Supreme Magus

So we can see a pattern emerging of a hidden political agenda in books written by authors all leading back to the S.R.I.A. (through the O.R+C), with the same methodology of creating pseudo-historical revisionism, debunking the creative and magical worth of MacGregor Mathers and his A∴O∴, which was the only organisation which held any true lineage to the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and to its Third Order. We also see the profanation of the A∴O∴ rituals being used in the said literature, a common tactic used by the S.R.I.A. it seems.

Thus Mathers’ Last Secret never really raises itself beyond the level of politically motivated character sniping. The same thing may be said about King over the Water which repeats much of the same nonsense that was thrown against MacGregor Mathers in the previous publication in addition to a sack of more vitriol that I will address and refute in my present review. And although Mr. Farrell doesn’t seem to underpin the general S.R.I.A. protocol to alleviate Wescott any longer, at least not if reading the final and printed version of King over the Water, he seems to have been doing exactly that in the early draft of his book as may be surmised from this quote:

When dealing with Mathers we are also compelled to look at what his input into the magical field was. Here we have a person who had no job and could have been writing occult material flat out. Arthur Waite, who was also a journalist, wrote countless books and papers. Writing rituals for someone who is a genius should have been something Mathers did in his lunch hour. It wasn’t. His output is, bluntly pitiable and shows little loyalty to the system that seeks to immortalise his name. There are 700 pages in the ‘Golden Dawn’ and another 300 in Francis King’s Flying Roll book.  Of them Mathers hand can only been seen in less than half of them. Such is the general lack of originality, it should have been possible for a jobless writer without any genius at all to knock them up in six months.

Notice the tone of sheer arrogance in Mr. Farrell’s words in this first paragraph. Although this particular paragraph has been cut out from the final version of King over the Water, the tone that it exhibits is quite telling of the remainder of the book. Mr. Farrell then continues:

Westcott, on the other hand, was coming up with many new ideas that were inspired by the system. We can see him projecting tarot and the tree onto the heavens, and tinkering with the enochian tablets to provide a very interesting tabloid which is only now just being investigated. He was running two Orders, several side orders and held down a proper job.

In the published version of King over the Water Mr. Farrell has toned down this reverence of Westcott, typical of S.R.I.A. or associated members. Instead he lays more emphasis on the creative genius of the Golden Dawn being some force transcending any incarnated individual, leading back to a Golden Dawn Angel which he identifies as Raphael, and infers to be the real identity of MacGregor Mathers’ Secret Chief, Lux e Tenebris, something that was proposed 15 years ago by his fellow frater R. A. Gilbert in his The Golden Dawn Scrapbook. Rest assured that I will return soon to the subject of L.e.T. Rest also assured that Mr. Farrell has a clear agenda with the publication of Mathers’ Last Secret and King over the Water in proposing such a thing.

In the introduction to King over the Water Mr. Farrell on page 15 (the first page of the entire introduction) states the purpose of its publication in a very clear and straight forward manner (I have highlighted the parts that the members of the Alpha Omega® have found in particular objectionable):

By the tail end of the 20th century this availability of information enabled various re enactment groups to be established. Some of these groups are sound with membership dedicated to performing the laudable goals of self-development and spiritual awakening. Unfortunately, other groups border on religious or political cults, typically centred upon a single leader.

These latter groups often evoke the turbulent history of the original order to justify the structures and cult of personality they wish to build. These “mythicians” claim that the original Golden Dawn floundered because the majority of its members discarded the rule of founder and chief Samuel “MacGregor" Mathers. Typically, such groups claim a link to that section of the Golden Dawn Order, which continued to acknowledge Mathers as its Chief and was later known as: the Alpha et Omega, or AO. Occasionally, such leaders claim to be the living incarnation of MacGregor Mathers himself. Lately, there have even been those who claim to be in communication with the same Secret Chiefs that inspired Mathers. Mathers’ ghost and his mythically perfect AO enable them to claim that somehow their product is superior. That unlike the other Golden Dawn products, they have rituals and teachings re-rewritten by the real genius behind the Order, Mathers.

Now, Mr. Farrell of course has tried to crawl away from the strong reactions coming from the membership of the Alpha Omega® stating that he was referring to Robert Zink’s now defunct Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn. However, notice that Mr. Farrell is referring to late 20th Century groups in present tense. Had he referred to Zink’s EOGD he would have talked about it in past tense as the EOGD now is an Order without any Temples (it’s only Zink talking to himself).

Note also specifically that sentence which states that “Lately, there have even been those who claim to be in communication with the same Secret Chiefs that inspired Mathers”. Who else as of lately has claimed such a contact with MacGregor Mathers’ Secret Chiefs other than the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega®? If you make a simple google search you will see that there are non.

As it is beyond any doubt that King over the Water was written as a wilful attack against the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega® we also must read anything coming from that book criticising the historical Alpha Omega and its past Archon Basileus as a veiled hit against the modern Alpha Omega® and its current Archon Basileus. Thus we must look and interpret the contents of King over the Water from two levels, the apparent (i.e. historical) and veiled (contemporary) meaning. This is also how I will analyse this book in my review.

Political branding

The major emphasis of King over the Water lays in its effort to character assassinate MacGregor Mathers. To do that Mr. Farrell makes great efforts in trying to map MacGregor Mathers’ political activities in France. In doing that Mr. Farrell is trying his very best to paint him as a reactionary right wing extremist, labelling his political ideology as “Scottish-Synarchic”. Mr. Farrell even states, without giving any source references, that MacGregor Mathers joined a right-wing group centered around the Scottish Rite in 1898. MacGregor Mathers is painted in this way because of his highland and jacobite fantasies paired with his fraternisation with certain synarchist and anti-semite circles in Paris, including prominent individuals such as Papus who was a brief member of the Ahatoor Temple in Paris. However, we cannot know for sure if MacGregor Mathers actually sympatised with the French synarchists. And if we are to assume that he found the synarchist movement as congruent with his personal interests and opinions, we do not know to what extent. We only know that he somewhat enjoyed their company from time to time.

Dr. Gerard “Papus” Encausse

But the common mistake we do today is to judge historical personages with our modern political corrected eyes. Today “right wing” has a very negative connotation, generally speaking, especially in occult circles and intellectual communities. But in the late 19th Century this was not the case, at least not to the same extent as it is today. Then being “left wing” was something detestable, whereas the opposite is telling of today. I also doubt that it is that common today to seek towards political radicalism as an occultist. The typical esoteric student of today is quite uninterested in politics, as political activism is almost shunned and considered being so un-esoteric, so profane. That attitude, however, was not the case during the latter turn of the Century.

In the fin de siècle environment of France, occultists were drawn to radical political circles. In a way, being an esotericist is per definition to be a radical. The word radical is taken from the Latin radix, which means “roots”. Esotericism is a quest for the spiritual roots of an exoteric tradition or religion. In the Islamic world, being a Sufi mystic is synonymous with being an “Islamist”, i.e. a political activist trying to create Allah’s Kingdom on Earth following the laws of Sharia. In a similar manner the Rosicrucian brethren who wrote the Fama et Confessio Fraternitatis promulgated a “general reformation, both of divine and human things”. In ancient Egypt, the Esoteric arts were synonymous with the wisdom of the State; Egypt, as with the Islamic Caliphates, was a theocracy. Many occultists of the fin de siècle dreamt of a theocracy with themselves as the elite in a Platonic sense; synarchism may be best described as a romanticised theocratic occult movement.

Martinist Lodge with Papus as grand maître

Not strange then that occultists are quite often drawn to political radical elements, although the actual flavour of the colours changes over time. And as has already been suggested, in the French fin de siècle age that was much more common than it is today. During these times occultists either became anarchists or communists on the left wing, or synarchists on the opposite right, especially the latter because of the victorian, romanticized and nationalistic paradigm in which they were living. A well known example of the former left-wing kind was the communist Jean Mallinger, the co-creator of the Pythagorean organisation l’Ordre Hermètiste Tétramégiste et Mystique (O::H::T::M::), also known as the l’Ordre d’Hermès Trismégiste.  At the other extreme we have Papus as the most known individual, the co-creator of l’Orde Martiniste (O:::M:::) and the l’Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose+Croix (OKR+C), who no doubt introduced MacGregor Mathers to his synarchist friends. And because of his conservative English upbringing I doubt that MacGregor Mathers found the anarchist scene that appealing compared to what Papus was able to present.

But I must stress this: We are on shaky grounds in trying to analyse MacGregor Mathers character and ethics on the basis of his involvement in a typical French fin de siècle occult community, which we for the most part only are able to speculate about as to its precise contents. In the name of objectivity, we have to detach ourselves from the current political paradigms in analysing a person that was living over 100 years ago and in a completely different paradigm compared to ours. But this attitude or these blinders that Mr. Farrell’s authorship is showing is quite typical of a non-scholar journalist posing as a serious historian. It is not enough to quote some letters from dissident English Adepts, in trying to compare MacGregor Mathers political views with that of his contemporaries, as we know that political radicalism of any kind was quite foreign to the British mindset; the typical Englishman was to conservative to accept any notions of social upheaval and revolutionary ideas.

Granted, compared to the typical late 19th Century middle-class Englishman, the image if MacGregor Mathers may be constructed to seem a bit “eccentric”. I don’t know about you, but the common image of the “stiff upper-lip” British character seems to be a bit boring, if you ask me. It seems to me that MacGregor Mathers appears to have had a character or personality which possible would better suit the common image we have of the southern European temperament. If this is true, is this possible fact to be held against him? Is Mr. Farrell’s position a typical expression of an Anglo-Saxon prejudice against the European character?

French fascism during WWII

Today we also know what MacGregor Mathers’ contemporaries didn’t realise, that many of the synarchist ideas would a few decades later, following the depression of the Great War, be recycled and taken to even further extremes during the rise of Italian fascism and German national socialism. In our modern and enlightened age we especially shun synarchic opinions because of its later natural development into the totalitarian corporativist systems of the 1930’s and the following devastation of the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust. If we are to accept Mr. Farrell’s version of MacGregor Mathers political opinions, we are not that far from accusing him of being a fascist or a nazi even, even though these ideologies weren’t invented during his life time. And I believe this to be the desired effect behind Mr. Farrell’s “research”.

Although Mr. Farrell tries somewhat to mitigate the charges against MacGregor Mathers (as he points out, Mathers did write books on the Hebrew Qabalah and Moina was in fact Jewish), he surely enough tries to frame MacGregor Mathers in being guilty by association. The association of course being stressed by Mr. Farrell of being Papus and his synarchist Martinist, Freemasonic and Rosicrucian organisations. The label has been established with the intent of having it being attached to anything MacGregorian. Mr. Farrell in conclusion speculates, without giving any source references, that MacGregor Mathers could picture himself in a future synachist Pan-European society with himself as governor of the Scottish highlands. To quote Mr. Farrell:

…this fantasy required him to be a right-wing autocrat who had a role within the inner circle of an emerging synarch which would eventually rule the world and give him a small Kingdom in Scotland. (p. 114)

Mathers believed that if the goals of this group were achieved the power of Ancient Egypt would be restored and he would get a nice Highland Principality. The delusion was so great that he had started parcelling out titles and subordinate posts to his friends. (p. 78)

What Mr. Farrell is actually trying to do here with his own fantasy is to paint the modern Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega®, and its current Archon Basileus, with the same extreme colours as that of his imaginations of MacGregor Mathers and his alleged “right-wing” and “synarchist” A∴O∴. As most of you are aware, these types of allegations has been thrown at the Alpha Omega® and our Chief David Griffin many times in the past, not the least by Mr. Farrell himself. With his new book this type of propaganda style rhetoric has taken a new and more subtle form, but essentially is of the exact same nature as we have seen so many times in the past.

The apparent objective however, overlaid over this hidden political agenda, is to paint MacGregor Mathers unjustly as a political villain. It doesn’t end here however, as will bee seen in the following section.

Pseudo-psychology

Mr. Farrell is evoking some sorts of pseudo-psychoanalysis in addition to the foregoing political inquisition, to paint MacGregor Mathers in the least pleasant and most mentally unstable terms imaginable. Taking the role of a layman analyst he places Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers on his imaginary coach. Let us see where Mr. Farrell is trying to lead us into believing.

Dr. Farrell c. 2012

According to Dr. Farrell the boy Samuel, who was fatherless, had a symbiotic relationship with his mother and had no interests in other women until she died when he was 31 years of age. Lacking a coherent father figure, Dr. Farrell informs us that Samuel “was at loss”. In this state he imbued himself with all kinds of typical “masculine activites”, such as boxing, fencing, joining the Militia, etc., even translating military manuals from French, as a compensation for his lack of a male role model and a hypothetical need to suppress his natural male traits in the presence of his mother. In this state he idealized wartime heroes and tried to picture himself as such in a martial “testosterone-filled” and “stereotyped fantasy”, including his “jacobite fantasies”. This, according to our Doctor, not only accounts for his later need of being a protective alpha-like male himself but also explains his desperate search of a father figure, which he initially found in his supposed ancestor Ian MacGregor and later in his Secret Chief Lux e Tenebris.

And then, only two years after his mother’s death, Samuel met Mina Bergson, or Moina as he preferred to call her, according to Dr. Farrell his first and only girlfriend whom he would soon to marry. Moina left her family household at the age of 29 and only briefly lived on her own until she became wrapped in Samuel’s persona, which Dr. Farrell believes to be quite similar to her father’s highly unstable character. Our Doctor surmises that because of Michael Bergson’s manic-depressive disorder Moina’s mother sacrificed everything to meet her husbands needs, something that served as a female role model for Moina. When she met Samuel, and became “totally obsessed with Samuel” in the process, she simply must have projected her father upon him and in following her mother’s footsteps sacrificed everything for her husband as well. Only such a self-sacrificing character could “put up with Mathers”, according to Dr. Farrell.

Mina Mathers c. 1887

Our good Doctor also concludes that the Mathers antipathy towards sexuality is to be explained with the fact that both were under the dominion of their respective parents until their late 20’s or early 30’s; i.e. they both were virgins and simply lacked any sound role models to guide them into the subject of sex. And because Samuel projected his own mother on Moina, and also his accustomed fantasy role as the gallant protector of her honour, he couldn’t feel any sexual desire for her. Samuel was compelled, Dr. Farrell argues, to “totally submerge Mina into his fantasy world”. This included initiating her into the Golden Dawn as its first Neophyte and also to rename her into “Moïna”, to better accustom her into his Jacobite fantasies and “make her appear less Jewish”. Our Doctor concludes that the Mathers relationship was “emotionally idealised which was essentially infantile” (p. 52).

This infantile personality, which was given to a world of fantasy as a compensation of his lack or control in the real world, attests for his later “autocratic leadership” and “poor judgement” in handling the crisis of the Order at the turn of the Century. When MacGregor Mathers places himself as the sole contact with the Secret Chiefs, and expect his Adepts to “submit” to him, Dr. Farrell immediately assumes that Mathers “wants to gain power over them and give himself a ego boost. But it is more than that, he wants them to accept his fantasy world, complete with the politics, with himself as its supreme king” (p. 81). However, Dr. Farrell misses the point entirely; it is traditional to choose one person in an outer vehicle, as that of the Golden Dawn, as the sole liaison with the Third Order. This is a fact also today in the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega®, which Mr. Farrell of course knows and is addressing veiled behind an historical account. Mr. Farrell is obviously trying to paint the current leadership of the Alpha Omega® with autocratic qualities.

Samuel Mathers c. 1882

Mr. Farrell rightly assumes that the initiatic process empowers the personality, including its dark shadow – that in the Golden Dawn which is referred to as the Evil Persona – which has to surface as an outcome of initiation. Mr. Farrell however makes lots of assumptions because of the fact that MacGregor Mathers worked fulltime with the governance of the Order, structuring its magical system and curriculum, and working his personal magic, at the expense of his patron Annie Horniman. Dr. Farrell assumes that because MacGregor Mathers lacked any “grounding in the real world” which would help him to “tackle those parts of himself which he did not want to face”, to compensated his “lack of self-confidence he created a fantasy world where he was in total control” (p. 78). His masculine sports interests was a sign of escapism, as well as being the Chief Adept of the R.R. et A.C. According to W. B. Yeats and Horniman, Dr. Farrell tells us (again without giving any source references), “he was drinking to much” as well (whatever that means); he immediately diagnoses him with alcoholism.

This is a rather odd assumption to make in my opinion. My personal experience, and that of my students, is that our post-modern world, with a full working career, wife, kids, etc., usually creates a big distraction from the Great Work and also from the necessary process of introspection. This so-called “grounding” may often turn your attention away from observing your behaviour because of stress, duties and conformity. That is why many magicians resort to magical retreats into the woods, away from the luxuries of modern civilisation. This is also the spirit of the famous Abra-Melin operation.

Former G∴D∴ Adept becoming monk

Does Mr. Farrell’s analysis apply for the Tibetan Buddhist monk as well? Does Mr. Farrell assume that the occidental occultist at the peak of his midlife career has a greater opportunity to deal with his shadow than does his contemporary in a Tibetan monastery or in a Hindu ashram? Doesn’t he believe in the power of meditation? The benefit of living the modern life and being a hermetic initiate is that it requires lots more mental stamina and will power to experience the equivalent result as his Oriental brother, not because of but in spite of him living a double life as a profane member of society and a hermetic initiate. It trains your mental stamina and will-power, and discrimination as well, as the Occidental way of life poses much more distractions and temptations. But the pressure from modern society can sometimes become to heavy for the serious spiritual seeker, and that is probably why Alan Bennett chose the life of a Buddhist monk over the life of a Western Hermetic Adept.

There are of course benefits from both approaches. I partially agree with Mr. Farrell, however not as categorically as he does. We learn a lot about ourselves from our everyday interaction with other humans. Psychotherapy, which is one of the most effective occidental tools to gain knowledge of the self and of the shadow self, presupposes that the patient lives a “normal” life, or at least has a social life in between the sessions so that he may bring with him “material” from different situations to work on, as a entry to the subconscious. This is also an effective method of introspection and self-analysis; Dr. Freud used his own theories upon himself and conducted a self-analysis during at least a decade before he presented his new school of psychoanalysis in 1900 with the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, a work which is mostly based upon his own dreams. However, there are also meditative techniques which can take you far in your introspective work. Magic may do that equally well as Eastern meditation, especially using the techniques that MacGregor Mathers had developed for his Adepts; the “symbolic drama” therapeutic technique developed by Hanscarl Leuner during the 1950’s and 60’s is very similar to the astral scrying techniques as taught in the R.R. et A.C.

Possible self-portrait by Moina

But all of this is ignored by Dr. Farrell who arrives at the final diagnosis which spells “infantility”, i.e. a lack of maturity. This is what you may gather from reading Dr. Farrell’s words by the letter; in the sub-text he is actually saying that MacGregor Mathers suffered from paranoid schizofrenia. Well, this isn’t contradictory because schizofrenia is a severe form of infantility. According to Dr. Farrell neither of the Mathers exhibited mature or adult traits. They also used their exalted positions in the Order to compensate for a lack of self-esteem and control over their “real” life. Soon MacGregor Mathers would regress into a paranoid psychosis at the time of the schism in 1900 and the following aftermath, according to Dr. Farrell. He also suggests that Moina Mathers suffered from psychological depression and in her final years developed a eating disorder, to compensate for her loss of control in her life with gaining control over her body. He attributes her supposed mood swings to her “anorexia” as well.

We are of course to surmise from this exposition that the Mathers also lacked any spiritual maturity, as that obviously requires a high level of psychological maturity and a level of self-control. Doesn’t this sound a bit too familiar for anyone who has followed the last decades of internet flame wars? Negative epithets very similar to these are quite commonly thrown at Alpha Omega® leaders when they defend the reputation of their Order. Let me tell you what I think of Dr. Farrell’s “character analysis”.

This so-called “analysis” of the Mathers personalities and supposed disorders are clearly showing a superficial understanding of psychoanalysis. Only a layman reading an introductory book on the subject would dare to throw such sweeping generalisations as they were established facts. Any professional analysts wouldn’t dare in fear of loosing his credibility. Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, warned his students of engaging in analysis of public figures in this way. He referred it to “wild analysis” and emphasised that it was negative and unwanted behaviour that could damage the reputation of psychoanalysis. It is one thing to make “wild analysis” during coffee breaks with your colleagues, but an entire different matter to make such as sweeping and uninformed statement in print or in public.

Dr. S. Freud, the father of Psychoanalysis

When speaking of psychoanalysis, a word that Dr. Farrell himself is using and thus is referring to as a theoretical framework for his character analysis, we are not talking about absolutes here. We are not talking about natural science when it comes to presenting facts and trying to map a character. Psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic science which describes individual characteristics and paints unique features for each person that it tries to analyse. It is not a mathematical formula as in 2 + 2 = 4. Thus, you cannot state that only because a fatherless boy who lives with his mother until he is 31 automatically will develop a lost gender identity and compensate with exaggerated masculine interests. The human nature simply is to unpredictable and cannot be mapped with any certainty, especially in cases such as this with so scarce material used as a basis.

Thus, you cannot gather enough evidence to make a proper analysis of a person that lived over a Century ago, based simply on a few letters, some who were written by individuals who had an axe to grind with MacGregor Mathers. It would have been a bit easier if we had some living eye witnesses that could recount personal reminiscences from encounters with him. To make a proper and well-underpinned character analysis you have to meet the subject yourself in person and have them undergoing regular psychoanalysis for quite some time. Even after a year you will only have a sketchy picture. After two there will appear some colours. After perhaps 3-5 years you will have painted a sufficiently accurate portrait which is workable to proceed futher with. What Dr. Farrell has done is to paint a caricature of a man who he has never met but personally projects very intensely upon. This is pure pseudo-science and cannot be taken as a serious portrait, especially when someone is painted in such an unbalanced negative way.

Mathers as a High Priest of Isis

Unfortunately for Mr. Farrell this particular reviewer happens to be a trained psychotherapist. I know what I am talking about. Although Mr. Farrell’s “analysis” is somewhat interesting or amusing even, it has absolutely nothing to do with science. It simply has no value other than serving as entertaining fiction. Any diagnosis says more about the person giving it than it does about the subject, even under the best of circumstances. But in the case of MacGregor Mathers, we are talking about the worst of circumstances. Thus this analysis is more telling of Mr. Farrel rather than it is of MacGregor Mathers.

Thus, the picture, or rather caricature which is painted cannot tell the reader anything about the true psychodynamics of MacGregor Mathers and his wife. There are simply to many “ifs”, “perhapses” and “supposes” present in the presentation of data. How can Dr. Farrell have had any slightest idea about MacGregor Mathers’ sex life prior to him meeting Moina? His theory that MacGregor Mathers couldn’t feel any sexual desire for Moina because of him projecting his mother upon Moina goes against traditional psychoanalysis, as Dr. Freud claims that all males project their mother on their girlfriends, including Dr. Farrell, because of the Oedipus complex. And how on earth can Dr. Farrell know anything concerning the quality of MacGregor Mathers’ relation to his mother?

Furthermore, what does Dr. Farrell know about other adult males that was present in MacGregor Mathers’ childhood or youth, or early adulthood even? Mr. Farrell doesn’t know anything about MacGregor Mathers school days. The chances are high that he might have found a male mentor there. It is quite common of fatherless boys to find substitutes as role models, particularly in school environments. MacGregor Mathers was quite athletic, probably also as a youngster. The chances are high that he in his trainer, perhaps during his school days or later, found a worthy mentor. We don’t know anything about this possibility other than it is likely.

S.L. MacGregor Mathers c. 1910

There are simply to many question marks apparent when it comes to MacGregor Mathers initial 30 years of life, especially his earliest and foundational years. And even as a layman analyst Mr. Farrell should know that it is the first 7-9 years of any human’s life that are the most essential in character building. There is absolutely nothing mentioned concerning these formative years of MacGregor Mathers’ life in King over the Water. Absolutely nothing besides the fact that a reference is given to Samuel’s father death when he was a very young boy and the different addresses where he and his mother were living. We don’t even know for sure what schools he attended.

The problem with Mr. Farrells analysis is not that there are so many question marks apparent. The problem is that Mr. Farrell prentends that there are none. He throws away his judgements and conclusions as they were facts which cannot be questioned. He is pretending to be a dispassionate scientist, even though he has no actual or substantial empirical data to work with. What does this say about Mr. Farrell himself? Why is he acting in such an arrogant way? Is there a hidden dynamic in Mr. Farrell’s subconscious psyche which touches upon the same issues that he is trying the very best to paint his antagonist with? I cannot know for sure in Mr. Farrell’s case, but the most common and infantile self-defence mechanism is that of projection. Can it be so that in targeting MacGregor Mathers he is actually finding himself? Are we perhaps reading and unintentional autobiography in King over the Water?

The founders were no initiates of the Golden Dawn

Mr. Farrell furthermore argues, as this was an established and objective truth, that neither Westcott nor MacGregor Mathers were initiates of the Golden Dawn, neither of the First or Second Orders. He claims that they only took their Adept’s obligations in front of each other, without giving any references to sources. I ask, how does Mr. Farrell know that this is what actually occured? Where is the actual source reference to back up such a claim? Or did he project in the astral back in time to see the actual event?

This assumption could be understood if one doesn’t believe in any physical persons being the Secret Chiefs. There is a popular myth amongst post-modernist self-initiates that Westcott and MacGregor Mathers self-initiated themselves through the Grades. Mr. Farrell seems to suggest something similar. It is of course possible that they only took the 5°=6° obligation, which is a species of Self-Initiation, but we cannot say for sure that this was the case without any written accounts to back up this “fact”. And even if this was to be proven, we cannot say for sure that MacGregor Mathers wasn’t given this grade in ritual prior to him repeating his obligation in London, and requiring Westcott to follow suit. It is even possible that MacGregor Mathers completed the full circle of the Second Order Grades through ritual and at the hand of L.e.T.

Kenneth MacKenzie

Regarding the Outer Order Grades, we also cannot for sure say that Westcott or MacGregor Mathers didn’t receive these Grades in full ritual at the hands of Kenneth R. H. MacKenzie and his proto-Golden Dawn Order the Fratres Lucis. Both of them knew MacKenzie well, and although Mr. Farrell claims (again without any references to sources) that Westcott wasn’t popular in MacKenzie’s eyes, and thus must have been barred from entry into his organisaton, he did favour MacGregor Mathers much.

Perhaps Mr. Farrell is right about Westcott not being admitted into the Fratres Lucis but concerning MacGregor Mathers I would say that it is highly possible if not likely that at least he was a initiate of MacKenzie’s operation, and that he thus might have been recieving Grades equivalent to the ones found in the Golden Dawn in the Outer, through initiation up to and including 4°=7°, prior to the founding of the Isis-Urania Temple No. 3 in 1888. That may explain the ease in which MacGregor Mathers wrote up the rituals from the Cypher Mss., and the actual reason why Westcott gave him that task as the sole person in their midst who had experienced them live.

The astral nature of the Secret Chiefs Part I – Raphael

Mr. Farrell’s main hypothesis in King over the Water is the nature of the Secret Chief Lux e Tenebris (L.e.T.), who he identifies as the Archangel Raphael and considers to be the real author of the Second Order material in general and the 5°=6° ritual and Z-documents in particular. He states that MacGregor Mathers, regardless of what he had stated in his letters, didn’t believe in anything else than Secret Chiefs on the Inner Planes and that they only were able to be contacted through channelling techniques. Therefore I will lay much emphasis in my review on refuting this post-modern misconception, which quickly has gained momentum and popularity amongst reconstructionist authorities and leaders.

Mr. Farrell backs up his claim that MacGregor Mathers believed in astral Secret Chiefs through the so-called “Horos incident”. The fact is that Mathers is on record in a letter to Florece Farr, dated 16 February 1900, saying “…that ‘Sapiens dominabitur astris’ [i.e. Fräulein Sprengel] is now in Paris and aiding me with the Isis movement”. This coincided with the time when Laura Horos and her husband Theo were guests at MacGregor Mathers’ home in Paris. Based on “the various letters that Mathers wrote” about Laura Horos Mr. Farrell, without citing any sources, infers that “he did not think Horos was Sprengel, just someone who could channel her” and that “she managed to convince Mathers” that she “was a Secret Chief who was behind the Golden Dawn” (p. 92).

Channeler Swami Laura Horos

However, Mr. Farrell misses the fact that neither Westcott nor MacGregor Mathers believed Fräulein Sprengel to be a Secret Chief of the Third Order because she was a mere Adeptus Exemptus 7°=4°, a Grade of the Second Order. But here, according to Mr. Farrell, she is elevated to that of a Secret Chief of the Third Order by Mathers! If it is true that MacGregor Mathers belived Horos to be able to channel Sprengel he surely thought that he had spoken with the dead ghost of a deceased German Adept which happened to be attached to the Cypher Mss. of the Golden Dawn, nothing more nor less, because he new intimately the nature of the contact with his Secret Chiefs.

It is true however that MacGregor Mathers in that same letter to Farr wrote regarding Westcott that “he has never been at any time either in personal or in written communication with the Secret Chiefs of the Order, he having either himself forged or procured to be forged the professed correspondence between him and them…” This is obviously a reference to the alleged letter correspondence between Westcott and Fräulein Sprengel, especially when seen in light of the above quote claiming that she was a guest in MacGregor Mathers’ house. However, he probably categorized her as such because this was the common opinion in the Order ranks that the Sprengel letters had authorised the Golden Dawn in the capacity of them being sent from a “Secret Chief”.

There is a possibility that the popular belief of the Secret Chiefs amongst the R.R. et A.C. Adepts, that is until MacGregor Mathers had revealed their true nature, was that they were high ranking Adepts as Westcott’s Sprengel, and that Mathers’ communication with L.e.T. was a relatively secret affair. Gratefully, without citing any cources, Mr. Farrell corroborates this suggestion in King over the Water when he says on page 64 that “Westcott never told the other members of the Golden Dawn that this was where their 5°=6° material had come from. In fact, he was prepared to lie to cover the source.” Again on page 98 Mr. Farrell writes that:

Mathers’ letter was trying to correct the misconception that Westcott had received a body of Second Order workings from Sprengel, when in fact that material had come from him as a result of his connection with Lux E Tenebris. This information was not well known within the Second Order. In 1912, Westcott had to explain it to Golden Dawn Adept F.L. Gardner, which meant that the story of the Second Order’s creation had never been clear.

I guess that Westcott was motivated by personal interests to keep this a secret affair as he wanted the idea to stick amongst the Adepts that Sprengel was a “Secret Chief”, although he himself new that she couldn’t have been that in virtue of her Grade. Mr. Farrell himself has previously corroborated this in his article Secret Chiefs and the Golden Dawn, from Hermetic Virtues, Volume V, Edition 17, which served as a species of “promotion trailer” to King over the Water. I now quote the pertinent part from that article:

In the Golden Dawn historical classic Magicians of the Golden Dawn, Ellic Howe waded into Westcott for forging correspondence between the Secret Chief Sprengel and himself to gain authority for the Golden Dawn. There is nothing to suggest that Westcott considered Sprengel a Secret Chief, just a member of a temple which could give him lineage. In fact her grade was 7=4 which meant that she was not a Secret Chief. Secret Chiefs were also supposed to be superhuman and yet Sprengel wrote to him in German rather than showing up in London to speak to him in his own language.

Presumably based on Mathers’ appraisal of Mrs. Horos psychic ability Mr. Farrell supposes MacGregor and Moina Mathers to have held séances in Paris to summon the Third Order astrally through channelling techniques. He furthermore claims that this became a standard practice in the later A∴O∴, who developed the astral techniques further to contact the Secret Chiefs even after the death of MacGregor Mathers with Adepts such as John William Brodie-Innes and Maiya Tranchell-Hayes, the latter who in turn taught Dion Fortune this supposed technique.

I challenge Mr. Farrell to back up his claims with sources that there existed an A∴O∴ inner plane channeling technique originally coming from MacGregor Mathers in contacting the Secret Chiefs, that was eventually to become the basis for Dion Fortunes spiritistic séances in communicating with her own “masters”. I have a hard time accepting this considering the severe attitude that the Order had against spiritism, as expressed in the early G∴D∴ application form:

The Chiefs of the Order do not care to accept as Candidates any persons accustomed to submit themselves as Mediums to the Experiments of Hypnotism, Mesmerism, or Spiritualism; or who habitually allow themselves to fall into a completely Passive condition of Will; also they disapprove of the methods made use of as a rule in such Experiments.

A quotation of the original Neophyte Obligation from 1888 echoes these sentiments in a quite similar way:

I will not suffer myself to be hypnotized, or mesmerized, nor will I place myself in such a passive state that any uninitiated person, power, or being may cause me to lose control of my thoughts, words or actions.

So what is Mr. Farrell suggesting with his pet theory, that the Chiefs MacGregor Mathers, Moina Mathers, Brodie-Innes and Tranchell-Hayes would break their obligations in their search for a inner plane communication? This suggestion, using words as “channelling” and “séances”, has nothing to do with traditional hermetic visionary experience, and smells a lot of New Age to me. I wouldn’t be surprised that Mr. Farrell originally was taught this “historical” detail as some kind of oral tradition within the Servants of the Light (S.O.L.), an organisation of which he was a member, which teaches that Secret Chiefs are astral and may be contacted through channelling. A former high-ranking member of the S.O.L. once told me that the entire curriculum for their Third Degree (corresponding to Tiphareth) was channelled by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki. This is the environment in which Mr. Farrell was fostered.

Channeler Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

The Secret Chiefs of the Third Order works on two different levels of hierarchy, external physical and internal non-corporeal. However, the internal council of Masters only work through their external equivalent Masters as a “medium” (I’m not using the word “medium” here in the usually understood spiritistic sense) or “liason”. Only humans that has reached a level beyond the Abyss have vehicles sufficient enough to be able to communicate with discarnate Masters, and this is not done through any passive mediumistic techniques such as suggested in the example with Dion Fortune or Ashcroft-Nowicki, which Mr. Farrell claims once were a standard A∴O∴ procedure.

Mr. Farrell holds that one has to understand the model used by the Theosophical Society to understand what MacGregor Mathers meant with his communication with the Secret Chiefs, i.e. that of the “Mahatmas”. This was based on a supposed Oriental practice of receiving communication while in a meditative state, or seeking out an astral inner plane location to rendezvous with their Master. Either that or meditating in a physical sacred spot in which the Master could use the energies of that place to transfer a vision to the meditating chela.

This Mr. Farrell assumes the Mathers experienced as well, or something in a similar vein. A “strong case” for this inner plane communication actually being conducted with the “Archangel Raphael” is that MacGregor Mathers, in a letter sent from Paris to Westocott in 1891, on the 30th of July, wrote that “I have been in much communication with Frater Lux E Tenebris (L.E.T.).” This word “communication” is a key word for Mr. Farrell which “proves” that he was referring to inner plane “spirit communication”. And when Westcott later replied that MacGregor Mathers must have made contact with an “advanced adept” Mr. Farrell immediately overlays this with Theosophical interpretations that he in fact was referring to a high level discarnate adept, contrary to a low grade just-passed-over adept. But what we see here is simply yet another conjecture. He even dismisses off Westcott’s own information to Felkin, as recounted in A. E. Waite’s diary Ordo R.R. et A.C. on June 11, 1912, that:

FR [Felkin] brought letter from SA [Westcott] with copy of cipher letter from Liege adept to SA. Cipher was GD, signature was Lux ex Tenebris. Letter said SA shouldn’t fear as DDCF [MacGregor Mathers] was cut off from communication, no date or address but SA says he has dated envelope.

Spirits on the inner planes surely don’t send letters through the postal services. Mr. Farrell states, however, that Westcott was lying to Felkin to cover up the tracks of the true astral identity of L.e.T. as being Raphael. This is strange and extremely far fetching considering that Westcott had no reason to lie about this so long after the events of MacGregor Mathers reception of the Second Order material. I personally believe that this letter from Westcott perhaps might be genuine as the date approximates the time of the court case between Aleister Crowley and MacGregor Mathers, following the Second Order profanation in Crowley’s The Equinox in 1909-1910, which would lead to the Secret Chiefs permanently abandoning their former student (a topic that I will return to in a later section). The “Liege adept” was obviously a decoy to cover up the real identity of L.e.T. from Westcott, whom Felkin in December 23, 1910, through his own research had come to identify as a Dr. Thiessen, which Waite is recalling with the words “5=6 sent to DDCF by Dr. Thiessen of Liege who died in 1909.”

Mr. Farrell’s astral / inner plane hypothesis creates more questions than it provides answers. One such question is why MacGregor Mathers was told by L.e.T. to move to Paris if he wasn’t a living person in the flesh? MacGregor Mathers himself claims in his official 1896 manifesto to the R.R. et A.C. Adepti:

I [was] able to proceed to the attainment of the Knowledge of the full 5° = 6° Ritual and of the Obligation thereof; and the establishment of the Vault of the Adepts; my quitting England being a necessary preliminary thereto.

S.L. MacGregor Mathers’ statement must also be placed in juxtaposition with what his wife Moina Mathers, in her preface to her husband’s book The Kabbalah Unveiled, later wrote in 1926 concerning this matter:

Three or four years later [after the founding of the Order of the Golden Dawn] he was told by his Occult teachers to transfer his centre to Paris, where my husband and I lived for the rest of his life.

There is no doubt in my mind that Moina clearly refers to S.L. MacGregor Mathers’ prime motivation to move to Paris as to facilitate his communication with his Secret Chiefs. If they were solely astral or angelical contacts, surely there wouldn’t be any need for a physical relocation. These written statements, when compared together, for me clearly confirms that his Occult teachers, in the minds of MacGregor Mathers and his wife, were real and physical individuals.

Ignoring this Mr. Farrell claims that both MacGregor Mathers and Westcott knew that the true identity of the Secret Chief Lux E Tenebris actually was the Angel Raphael, and that both lied when they affirmed that he was a real and living person which MacGregor Mathers had claimed to have met in Paris in 1891. This hypothesis actually draws it inspiration from a visionary experience recorded in june 20, 1888 (the year of inception of the Golden Dawn) by one Frater Vota Vita Mea, that is Thomas Henry Pattison which is listed as No. 8 of the Horus Temple No. 5 membership roll, admitted as a 5°=6° by march 1888 and who later advanced in rank to become the Imperator of that Temple. The letter in which this vision is presented has previously been published in full by R. A. Gilbert in his The Golden Dawn Scrapbook, pages 37-39. I will quote a small part of that transcript which is pertinent to our discussion (retaining comments by Mr. Gilbert within square brackets):

Fra. H. was conducted by an Eagle-headed messenger into the presence of the Angel R + [Raphael] (whom I, S'Rioghail Mo Dhream, know by the motto L[ux] e T[enebris])

In this letter MacGregor Mathers clearly identifies the “Angel R+” (which Mr. Gilbert in a highly speculative manner infers is Raphael) with Lux e Tenebris, the motto that MacGregor Mathers continued to use whenever he spoke of his later in the flesh Secret Chief which he met in Paris. But remember that “Angel R+” being identified as “Raphael” was originally a hypothesis of Mr. Gilbert in his book from 1997. Now, almost two decades later, it has been accepted by the post-modern reconstructionist camp to be gospel. Isn’t that interesting, considering the Christian fundamentalist Character of the O.R+C manifesto, an organization in which both Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Farrell were listed as officers? Let me now quote a part of that manifesto from 2007:

We believe that the Anglo-Saxon and associated Indo-European cultures are the spiritual and literal descendants of these “lost ten tribes of Israel,” representing God’s chosen people as mentioned in the Old Testament.

We believe in the inevitability of the end of the world and in the Second Coming of Christ. We believe that the coming “end times events” are part of a cleansing process that is needed before Christ’s kingdom can be firmly established on earth. During this time, Satan and his allies will attempt to destroy God’s chosen people using any means available. The result will be a violent and bloody millennial struggle, in which Christians shall battle Satan and the forces of evil. Many will perish, and some will be forced to wear the Mark of the Beast merely to participate in business and commerce. After the final battle is ended, however, Christ’s kingdom shall be established on earth, and Christians be recognized as the one and true Israel.

Seeing the foregoing suggested identity of L.e.T. in the light of this context, isn’t it strange then that one of the foremost Christian spiritual beings, the equivalent of a god in a Pagan pantheon – Raphael – has been elevated to the status of a Secret Chief? This is quite strange considering the fact that the concept of Secret Chiefs has a Pagan origin. Although I can understand the symbology behind this, attaching the name “Golden Dawn” (the rising Sun) to the Arch-Angel of Tiphareth, it is still rather far fetching and highly speculative to transform the letter and sign “R+” to Raphael. Let me now present an alternative view on this matter regarding its identity.

It is tradition amongst true Rosicrucian initiates to abbreviate the word “Rosy Cross” with an “R” followed by the cross symbol (+), the “R” of course denoting “Rosy” and the “+” signifying the “Cross”. This small detail is not that well known amongst modern reconstructionist Rosicrucians. In a way the “R+” is a shortform for “R+C”. So, the true identity of the “Angel R+” might as well be “Angel Rosy Cross” as it is “Angel Raphael”. Or rather, knowing the traditional protocol for the combined use of the letter “R” and the symbol “+” to denote “Rosy Cross” or “Rosicrucianism”, a fact which Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Farrell obviously seems to lack any knowledge of, I hold that it is most probable that the author of that letter in fact is referring to the “Angel Rosy Cross” rather than the Archangel Raphael.

The Great Avenging Angel HUA

This fact brings profound connotations, which I prefer not to delve into to deep here on this blog. Suffice to say is that it may be (or rather probable is) a reference to the Guardian Angel of the Rosicrucian current or egregore. The fact is that this is an old Rosicrucian Tradition – that the R+C Order has its own Guardian Angel – which is evidenced in the senior curriculum of the 1777 General Reformation Order of the Gold und Rosenkreutz and its formula to invoke its egregorian angel. Thus, this mention of “Angel R+” might be a reference to Golden Dawn’s own Guardian Angel HUA.

However, Mr. Farrell states, in his usual manner without showing the reader any references to sources to back up his claim, that MacGregor Mathers “5=6 scrying revealed that the Golden Dawn has a triple aspect…Angel, which oversaw its work” (p. 350). According to Mr. Farrell, the teaching aspect of the Angel was HRU; the governing aspect was called HUA; the name of the one connecting the Second Order with the Third Order was a secret, but Mr. Farrell speculates that this was Raphael. According to him it was Raphael that inspired MacKenzie, Westcott, and MacGregor Mathers to formulate the Order in its inception, later placing his protective hand over Felkin and Brodie-Innes, and then Case, Crowley and Fortune, and finally every reconstructionist Order leader you may think of, naturally including himself.

Paul Foster Case

I also must point out that for a traditional Rosicrucian initiate there isn’t much of a contradition between such an “angelic” being as HUA and a physical secret chief as it may seem for a non-initiate scholar; they both may belong to the same circle of initiates, if not the same class. At least, students who may have read the course material of Paul Foster Case attentively won’t find any contradiction of concepts. The word “angel” may have different meanings in different contexts. MacGregor Mathers connecting an “angel” to a Secret Chief with a motto suggests a different interpretation of this level of spiritual beings compared to the Qabalistic meaning of the Arch-Angel Raphael. P. F. Case claims that he had a inner connection with his Secret Chief before he met him in the physical as “Master R”. (Notice that both Mathers and Case used the letter “R” to designate their supposed Secret Chief.) It is typical of reconstructionists to create such a dichotomy between inner and outer, astral and physical, spiritual and material. Such a division is wholly foreign to the true Hermetic Tradition.

Thus, for me it seems plausible that MacGregor Mathers used the Lux e Tenebris phrase as a generic motto or “decknamen” for whatever Secret Chief or source of inspiration he had come into contact with or believed in at a certain point. When he made a tentative connection to a spiritual being, possible the Angel HUA, he applied the L.e.T. motto unto it. An alternative interpretation is that he was given this motto through a scrying session meeting HUA. After the later meeting with his physical Secret Chief in Paris he started to apply that motto onto him, alternatively realised that HUA had prepared him for his coming contact with the Secret Chiefs in Paris.

That both MacGregor Mathers and Moina claimed that he was told to move to Paris to be able to meet and intercourse with his Secret Chiefs physically (see the above quotes placed in juxtaposition) suggests that he was guided through a preliminary astral communication prior to his departure to Paris. Thus the Lux e Tenebris motto served as an office title rather than a personal magical motto. Later on there started to spread the false rumour originating from Felkin that the identity of L.e.T. was a “Dr. Thiessen of Liege”, who supposedly died in 1909. However, it’s a well known fact amongst initiates that the L.e.T. motto is a blind, and that the real or personal motto and true identity of MacGregor Mathers’ continental Secret Chief still is secret to this day and only privy to them. They surely know that it isn’t Raphael!

Let his soul rest in peace for God’s sake!

Stay tuned for the Second Part of my critical review which will continue the discussion on the astral nature of the Secret Chiefs, and also analyse Mr. Farrell’s personal opinions regarding why Mathers lost his contact with the Secret Chiefs, if it really was true that the A∴O∴ was run as a money making enterprise, concerning the purpose of the 6°=5° and 7°=4° Grades, the Silanum of the Alpha Omega, and finally Mr. Farrells analysis of the teachings of the A∴O∴.

S∴R∴