Golden Dawn Blog by Frater Yechidah

It is perhaps well-known today that much of the published corpus of Golden Dawn material contains errors and altered text, some minor, some much more significant. It is likely less well-known that there are some issues with the attribution of documents. I outline two examples from the Flying Rolls below. Flying Roll XI, on Clairvoyance , is rightly attributed to Mathers, but the actual wording of it comes from Westcott, as we can see in this full title and attribution: Flying Roll XI "Clairvoyance" A MS in the words and language of G.H. Fra. N.O.M. written out from his Notes of a lecture delivered extempore By the G.H. Frater D.D.C.F. 7=4 Chief Adept of England [added in pencil: by NOM. March 1893] We see from the above that Mathers gave his lecture "extempore," which means without preparation, and Westcott took notes of this, before assembling them into this Flying Roll. This is important, because the content is from Mathers, but the...

One of the important things to realise when making tools within the Golden Dawn tradition is that the material largely does not matter. Unlike some grimoiric traditions, the Golden Dawn generally does not see the magic as being inherent within the material itself, but rather within the symbolism employed upon it. An example of this can be found in the Theoricus Adeptus Minor paper on the Ring and Disc (see Sandra Tabatha Cicero's The Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers , p. 258): "The Ring and the Disc may be made of any material - cardboard will do - not too light, or the elasticity of the thread may vitiate its action." It may come as a surprise to many people that cardboard was a particularly common material used by the original members. For example, W.B. Yeats made a lot of his talismans from cardboard, pasting coloured paper on to make the various polygrams, etc. Yeats' Tzadkiel Talisman Yeats' Rose Cross Lamen This is not ...

"It has been suggested more than once by magical writers that the initiation of a candidate is like the consecration of a talisman: something passive and unfocused is given shape, direction, and energy." John Michael Greer, Inside A Magical Lodge