Golden Dawn Blog by Frater Yechidah

To answer a question on the Golden Dawn Forum , I drew up the following image to show the placement of the Hebrew letters on the Greek Cubical Cross. I thought I'd share it here for others interested in where the letters go. The image can be printed out, cut to shape (ensuring the blank squares are cut out) and then folded up to form the cross. This can then be used as a guide for painting a more solid construct. The above placement, which the original Order used, has the three mother letters down the centre of the front, with Fire (Shin) above, Water (Mem) below, and the reconciling Air (Aleph) between them. The two letters on either side of this are the Moon (Gimel) on the left and the Sun (Resh) on the right. The back of the cross has the remaining five letters related to the planets, while the 12 simple letters, relating to the zodiac, are placed around the sides. To avoid confusion, note that some modern groups assign the letters differently.

While going through some of my Golden Dawn papers I came across a diagram of two interlaced hexagrams, which show how the colours of the Zodiac signs are obtained. I have reproduced this here so that others wondering why, for example, Scorpio is "green-blue" can see the pattern. This diagram needs some explanation. The colours of the planets do not entirely match the Golden Dawn's system, either for the King or Queen Scales of either the planets themselves or the Sephiroth to which they are attributed. The problematic ones are Saturn (typically indigo, or if we take the colour of its Sephirah, black), Jupiter (typically violet, though blue is applicable to its Sephirah), Mercury (typically yellow, though orange is applicable to its Sephirah), and Sol (typically orange, though yellow is applicable to its Sephirah). These planetary colours appear largely drawn from the Greater Key of Solomon. Once we appoint six signs to the planets (Mercury to Gemini, for exam...

It is five years to the day since I posted on my Gnostic blog Henosis Decanus  about the relation of the planets to the Archons of Gnostic mythology . I was recently asked what my thoughts on this are after all these years, so let us explore this idea a little deeper. In the esoteric world we are often seen as being tied to the forces of our birth charts. Our strengths and weaknesses, our high points and low points, our ideals and aims, what drives us and holds us back, are all mapped out before us like an oracle, like the foretelling of our doom.  Indeed, it is often the case that many occultists will blame their chart for their problems, admitting a kind of fatalist thinking, where who and what we are is already decided, and cannot be deviated from. This is, in my opinion, an unacceptable approach for a magician, and certainly for a Gnostic. An adept who blames exterior forces for his or her problems is an adept hoping to escape responsibility, and thus this sho...

Many magicians nowadays practice Solar Adorations, such as Crowley's Liber Resh vel Helios or the Cicero G.'.D.'. variant of Kheperu Nu Ra (which I personally use). These correspond to the four pivotal points of the Sun's journey throughout the day: Sunrise, Noon, Sunset, and Midnight (effectively every 6 hours), and thus the ritual attunes us to the cycles of the Sun and its life-giving rays, as well as constantly reminding us of the spiritual throughout our day. But there is much more to this, and it can be found via correspondences, some of which I've come up with via meditations and ponderings. The gods are an obvious correlation and are taken from the Adorations themselves (in this case from the Cicero one, since I'm making correspondences within the Golden Dawn system itself). However, these four points of the day also relate to the four points of the year, for the Sun's journey is not merely a daily one, but a yearly one too. Sunrise is when the Sun...

In the second part of my LRP analysis I posted an image at the end of what I termed the "Breastplate of the LRP". It combines the four Divine Names into a small 4X4 Table, and, according to my meditations, relates to God as the Tetragrammaton (YHVH) ruling over the Twelve Tribes of Israel (the twelve remaining squares). At the time of sharing this image I had not yet figured out which Tribe would be assigned to which letter, but on a casual glance at the Tribes of Israel & the Zodiac Signs lecture given by Mathers for the Philosophus grade (later employed in Zelator in the Stella Matutina) I came to an interesting conclusion. This lecture gives a table of the 12 zodiac signs, the Twelve Tribes, 12 relevant angels, and the 12 permutations of YHVH. What I'm interested in here is the permutations, as they offer the key to assigning the Tribes to the Tablet given above. The astute reader may immediately notice something about the above table (barring the ...