The heart of the Golden Dawn system of magic is often referred to as theurgy, or “God-working.” It is summed up in the Obligation of the Adeptus Minor: “I further promise and swear that with the Divine Permission I will, from this day forward, apply myself to the Great Work—which is, to purify and exalt my spiritual nature so that with the Divine Aid I may at length attain to be more than human, and thus gradually raise and unite myself to my higher and Divine Genius …” This is the light that guides the path of the Golden Dawn magician.
The true form of an archangel would be similar to a great pillar of energy or a geometric shape. Ritual work involving Gods, archangels, and angels will be presented in later chapters of this book.
He taught that each individual human soul was immersed within the body of matter, and that the soul required divine aid to free itself and return to the One Source of All.
strict adherence to some dogmatic vision of obedience and insubordination, or reward and punishment, but rather to the inclination of Deity toward the natural cosmic order of involution and evolution, or the experiential inhaling and exhaling of Spirit into the material world and back again. As we all contain sparks of that Divine Light and exist within the Great Chain of Being, our magic should inevitably reflect this; when it doesn’t, we risk failure or worse. Therefore, a good deal of the part of the magician’s continuing practice is to create the conditions that help us orient ourselves to the Higher Will. We do this by purifying the auric sphere through meditation, exercises such as the Middle Pillar, and cleansing rituals such as the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram.
Your magical intention should be in alignment with the Will of the Divine, or at the very least, not conflict with it in any way. Fighting against the universal stream is like swimming against a riptide: the only way to safety is to go with the flow of the current. Instead of viewing it as a kind of wish-fulfillment cure-all, a clear and aligned intention is a good starting point in magic; the combined forces of willpower and imagination need a goal to focus on.
Pitfalls to Watch For The practice of magic paves the way to encounters with higher levels of reality. Therefore, it is important that the would-be magician be free from neuroses and other forms of mental illness that tend to cloud one’s perceptions and can in fact worsen when magic is undertaken.
we cannot stress strongly enough that the main goal of the Golden Dawn system is identical with that of any genuine spiritual path: the renewal of the human Spirit, the healing of our world and soul, and the return of Sacredness to human life and living.
Immanence and Transcendence Ultimate Divinity is both immanent (within everything) and transcendent (beyond everything). The Universe is completely divine, living, and animated.
The Way of Return Humanity has become separated from the Divine through involution, the process by which the Spirit manifested into matter. We seek “the Way of Return” back to unity with the Divine, through evolution, the process by which Spirit reconnects with Divinity. Involution and evolution are both natural and necessary processes of creation. They function as the exhalation and inhalation of Spirit.
The Universal Order The nature of the Universe is ultimately good, constructive, and leans toward balance. Evil is created from a state of imbalance.
Qabalah The Qabalah is the foundation for much of the magic employed by the Golden Dawn.
Divination Divination is an art and science that seeks to discover the divine significance behind “chance” events. The word “divination” indicates communication from the Divine. This is a receptive skill that must be cultivated. It takes practice for the magician to pay attention to what the Divine is trying to express in a reading.
Vibration “By names and images are all Powers awakened and reawakened.” This often-repeated Golden Dawn quotation clearly states that vibration and visualization are the twin engines that empower magic.
All matter is vibratory energy. There is a physical phenomenon known as harmonic resonance that shows that if one object starts to vibrate strongly enough, another object nearby will begin to vibrate or resonate with the first, if both objects share the same natural vibratory rate. The magician vibrates a godname in order to effect a harmonic resonance between Deity as it exists within his or her own psyche and as it exists within the Greater Universe. The aim is to have the psyche “resonate” with the Divine. Not only does this lift the consciousness to a higher, more purified level, it accelerates the purification of the body through the expulsion of old dead cells. Properly performed, the vibration should be felt throughout the entire body and imagined to be vibrated throughout the Universe. Successful vibration in ritual is often accompanied by a tingling sensation in the hands or face.
One option is to incorporate yoga and its well-known benefits into your overall spiritual practice. Israel Regardie often suggested that students take up a series of five Tibetan exercises for rejuvenation that were published in a book by Peter Kelder and reprinted in Donald Michael Kraig’s Modern Magic.
The Elements One of the most basic divisions of knowledge in magic concerns the four elements: Fire Water, Air, and Earth. It has been a part of Western esoteric practice since the time of the ancient Greeks.
They are the basic categories of existence and action—the building blocks of everything in the Universe. Everything contains one or more of these archetypal energies.
Fire The qualities of Fire are heat and dryness. Fire symbolizes action, movement, vitality, spontaneity, quickness, the beginning, initializing force, and transformation. Fire rules electricity, combustion, radioactivity, leadership, personal
power, activity, and physical energy. The direction or cardinal point assigned to Fire is south. The Hebrew name of this element is Ash.
Water Water’s qualities are cold and moisture. Water represents receptiveness, responsiveness, creativity, fluidity, fertility, and reproduction. Water governs pleasure, social interactions, emotions, and all liquid physical matter. The direction attributed to Water is west. Its Hebrew name is Mem.
Air Air has the qualities of heat and moisture. Air is the element of speed, communication, expression, mediation, connection, reconciliation, adaptation, abstraction, changeability, and conflict. Air rules the intellect, the weather, illness, suffering, and all gaseous physical matter. The direction corresponding to Air is east. In Hebrew it is called Ruach.
Earth Earth’s qualities are cold and dryness. Earth symbolizes stability, solidity, materiality, manifestation, endurance, and productivity. Earth governs agriculture, money, business, employment, and all solid physical matter. North is the direction assigned to Earth. This element is called Aretz in Hebrew. In terms of polarity, Fire and Air are considered masculine, while Water and Earth are seen as feminine. In terms of the human psyche, Fire expresses willpower; Water is emotion, intuition, and the subconscious mind; Air is the intellect and the rational mind; and Earth is sensory perception.
Spirit The four elements are crowned and completed by a fifth—Spirit, which is also known as the quintessence or “fifth essence.” The word “spirit” comes from the Latin word Spiritus, meaning “breath.” Spirit symbolizes the Deity, the Infinite, and the Ever-Present. It is the element of ultimate transcendence and divine essence.
The Tree of Life The diagram of the Tree of Life (Figure 8:) is essential to one’s understanding of the Hermetic Qabalah. According to tradition, the Universe emanated from the Three Veils of Negative Existence or stages of abstract “nothingness”: Ain (“Nothing”), Ain Soph (“Limitless”), and Ain Soph Aur (“Limitless Light”). The Unknowable Infinite, called God by some and Ain Soph by the Qabalists, began to manifest its energy into the Universe through ten stages, or “emanations,” known as the Sephiroth, which were reservoirs or containers of divine energy. A single emanation is called a Sephirah. Each successive Sephirah became denser than the previous one, acquiring substance as energy descended into the various stages of manifestation. Eventually the energies solidified at the tenth and final level of emanation, resulting in the physical Universe as we know it.
The Planets Planet, or “wandering star,” developed as a term to describe any Celestial body visible from the earth that appeared to move or “wander” in a regular orbit against the backdrop of stars in the night sky. The ancients recognized seven planets, including the luminaries of the Sun and the Moon (Sol and Luna). Planetary energies are used to affect the astral realm, the subtler planes above it, and the physical realm below it. The planets also represent aspects of the human soul.
The Subtle Bodies
The five “bodies” of the Microcosm from the lowest and densest to the highest include: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the mental body, and the spiritual body (Figure 89). Figure 89: The Subtle Bodies
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The Etheric Body This body is composed of ether or life-force energy and is usually divided into two parts: the etheric double and the aura. • The etheric double looks like the physical body and extends about an inch out from the physical body. It is composed of subtle energies that maintain the biological body and acts as a kind of energy sheath that forms the blueprint of the physical body. • The aura is often called the “sphere of sensation” in the Golden Dawn manuscripts, and among the Subtle Bodies, the aura usually receives special attention. The aura is a layer of astral substance—an egg-shaped sphere of light energy that surrounds the etheric double and expands out about two or three feet from the physical body. It permeates the physical body and can be seen by clairvoyants. As a whole, the etheric body is called the Nephesh or animal soul by Western magicians.
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The Astral Body Sometimes called the emotional body, the astral body refers to the actual human consciousness created from thoughts and feelings, which can be detached from the physical and etheric bodies under the right conditions. It is often called the Body of Light in spite of the fact that it resembles the idea of a mind more than a body. The astral body is the life-body of feeling and consciousness that exists beyond the physical senses, having approximately the same size and shape as the physical body. It is this astral body of the magician that moves through and can effect changes within the Greater Universe by way of the nonphysical worlds. Like the aura, the Body of Light is a field of energy residing in the same space as the aura. However, the astral body is constantly shaped and reshaped by thoughts and emotions.
In Qabalistic terms, the astral body is the Ruach.
The Mental Body This is the body of abstract consciousness or pure awareness that cannot be localized or visualized as occupying space in relation to the physical body. The mental body is a basic blueprint of the self, beyond all forms and images, which opens up realms of experience beyond time and space. Qabalists refer to it as the Neshamah.
- The Spiritual Body Finally, there is the spiritual body, the core of consciousness and the deepest, most essential part of the self. This is the divine spark or seed at the center of all the other layers of the self. It represents the point of interaction between man, the Microcosm, and God—the Macrocosmic Unity of Being. In Qabalistic terms, it is the Yechidah, the highest part of the Neshamah in Kether. Each of these Subtle Bodies controls the one directly below it: the spiritual body controls the mental body, which in turn governs the astral body, and so on.
The Self One of the primary goals of the Golden Dawn system is to prepare initiates for union with the Higher Self.
Lighting the divine spark within is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing process.
The plural of genius is genii and it is the root of the Arabic jinn, or “spirit.”
Spiritual Alchemy: The Three Principles
These alchemists did not look merely for the substance of gold; they sought to give the quality of gold to their own being—to transmute the base metals, gross and impure parts of their own nature, to spiritual gold or wisdom. To them, gold, the metal that never tarnishes and cannot be corrupted by Fire or Water, was a symbol of illumination and salvation. The primary goal of alchemy is to bring all things, especially humanity, to their pre-ordained state of perfection.
The objective of alchemy is the uncovering of this inner wisdom, and the removal of veils and obstacles between the mind and its intrinsically pure divine source.
Alchemy divides all matter into Three Principles of Nature, the tria principia, said to exist in all things: salt, sulfur, and mercury (Figure 90). These fundamental substances are not to be confused with ordinary substances of the same name.
Salt Salt is the solid and stabilizing principle. It is the hardening, fixed, and crystallizing tendency. Sometimes referred to as earth, salt is the essential corpus or body.
Sulfur Sulfur is the volatile, fiery, and energizing principle. It is the emotional, feeling, and passionate urge that motivates life. Sulfur is the essential soul.
Mercury Mercury is the fluid and mediating principle. This is a Watery, feminine tendency that relates to the concept of consciousness. Mercury is the vital lifeforce that permeates all living matter and is symbolic of the act of transmutation. As the transforming agent of the alchemical process, Mercury is the essential Spirit.