Golden Dawn Blog by Frater Yechidah

Gnostic priest Jordan Stratford made an interesting post on the Golden Dawn lately, to which I'd like to make a few responses to (unfortunately commenting is disabled there). "Known as the Order of the Golden Dawn , the group attracted some of the greatest artistic and philosophical minds of turn-of-the-century London, including fantasists Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dracula creator Bram Stoker, Fu Manchu creator Sax Rhomer, occultists Arthur Edward Waite (creator of the popular tarot deck), Samuel Liddel Macgregor Mathers, überweirdo Aleister Crowley, and famed Irish poet WB Yeats." Firstly, I love the description of Crowley as "überweirdo". However, the mention of Bram Stoker is perhaps misleading, as I discovered when I inquired about his potential membership on my blog last year. While not all of the membership lists have been published, it seems that Stoker is among none of them, although he was perhaps known to some of the Golden Dawn's me...

"With each of the schisms and quarrels which have occurred from time to time, various official documents have been lost, or, what is simply criminal, deliberately destroyed. Unvelievable though it may sound, the attitude seems to have been, 'If I can't make use of these papers. then nobody shall. Into the fire they go.' When one of the Chiefs of a North county Temple died many years ago, it is alleged that his widow promptly seized all his Order manuscripts and, so we are told, destroyed them. Very much the same sort of thing has occurred in other of the Temples. This lamentable behaviour has been confined to no particular group. Where there have been students of the Order this insane attitude has always manifested itself. There is, so I am told, an individual in charge of one of the Temples whose understanding of certain magical matters is not too profound. Rather than acknowledge this, which would have been forced upon him were documents on these subjects distributed...

By this stage my "Weekly Roundup" is merely a title for these kinds of posts; it has absolutely no relationship to a weekly round-up of anything, because it's neither done weekly, nor does it involve a round-up of a single week's posting in the GD blogosphere. That said, I hope you find some of these links of use, as they contain some extremely interesting material for students of this system. Peregrin at Magic of the Ordinary made a somewhat distressed post (and one that I and many others can empathise with) on the state of modern Golden Dawn groups, the constant flame and turf-wars, and what has ultimately turned into a "Battle of the Blogs" in recent months. Sufficed to say, it is my intent that Mishkan ha-Echad will never be party to this kind of behaviour, which does no one in the Golden Dawn community, nor the name and spirit of the system, any good. Nick Farrell has posted a few pictures from the new Horus Hathor GD tarot deck , which, as you can ...

The Dadouchos (Greek for "Torch-bearer") is the Consecrator of the Temple, its members, and its candidates. He is represented by the god-form Thaum-Esh-Neith (Neith), and his station is in the South of the Temple, symbolising Heat and Dryness, which is the Place of the Guardian of the Lake of Fire and the Burning Bush. He is charged with the task of preparing the Lamps and Fires of the Temple for the Opening, and to watch over the Censer and the Incense for the duration of the ceremony. He wears a black collar with a lamen depicting a white Fylfot Cross on a black background, and carries the Censer of Incense. He bears a special relationship with the Stolistes in the Temple. The feminine form of Dadouchos is Dadouche , but Dadouchos is often used in practice for both sexes.

Issue 8 of Hermetic Virtues has recently been released, containing the following excellent articles: + The Rosicrucian Impulse: Magic, Mysticism and Ritual by Chic Cicero + The Tower, another new Tarot trump by Harry Wendrich + Abramelin and the Golden Dawn by Nick Farrell + Magical Maturity by Dean F. Wilson + Ain Soph and the Golden Dawn by Harry Wendrich + Review of a Previously Unpublished Alchemical Manuscript by Samuel Scarborough + The Alchemical Room by Tommy Westlund + A Solo Equinox Ritual by Samuel Scarborough To obtain a copy, click here . To read my article on Magical Maturity, check here .