Golden Dawn

## Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

The Rose Cross of the Golden Dawn, based on the Rosicrucian symbolism of the Red Rose and the Cross of Gold

## Background Information

### **Type**

Magic Cabal

Leaders| * Samuel Liddell MacGregor MathersWilliam Wynn WestcottWilliam Robert Woodman

**Golden Dawn** (黄金夜明, *Ōgon Yoake*?), also known as the **Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn** or the **Golden** (黄金, *Ōgon*?) for short, was once the largest and most powerful magic cabal in the United Kingdom and the world. Active at the end of the 19th century, the original cabal was destroyed by the rebellion of Aleister Crowley, though the various cabals born from its splinters and remnants have persisted to the present day.

## Principles

As a group from Europe, the Golden Dawn was affected by a common thinking among European magicians, who after running into dead ends in their research and exhausting the resources available to them in Europe, believed the answers lay elsewhere and sought them in foreign parts, such as the large, diverse and geographically convenient 'Dark Continent', Africa.

Within the cabal, one's stock of knowledge was directly linked to their power.

### Structure

The Golden Dawn had a number of levels and groups within itself, including the First Order, the Portal, the Second Order (also referred to as the R.R.etA.C., short for "Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis", meaning "Ruby Rose and Golden Cross"), the Third Order, and the Lady of the Masquerade Ball's cabal-within-a-cabal known as the Sphere. In addition, there were also factions aligned to Mathers and Westcott, the two initial founders left after the unnamed founder's departure.

#### Grades and Positions

The Golden Dawn has an internal grading system, connected to both individual rank and the roles in the ceremonies carried out by the cabal. The grades are referenced to by paired numbers separated by an equal sign, relating to the associated position on the Tree of Life. With the exception of the initial 0=0 grade which has no associated position, the first numeral is the number of steps up from the bottom of the tree (Malkuth), while the second is the number of steps down from the top (Keter). Grades of 8=3 and beyond (associated with the Secret Chiefs) are not typically involved with the cabal's standard operations, with members such as Dion Fortune believing they didn't really exist and were just for show.

As well as the grading system, the Golden Dawn also has a number of positions dedicated to specific roles in its operations.

 Praemonstrator
 Cancellarius
 Hiereus

#### Secret Chiefs

One of the roles held to be within the Golden Dawn was that of the **Secret Chiefs** (シークレットチーフ, *Shīkuretto Chīfu*?), contact with which was supposedly carried out by Anna Sprengel. These positions are associated with grades of 8=3 and higher, and given the dubious background behind Anna Sprengel's alleged connection to the cabal, have been thought to be just for show and not actually existing.

#### Temples

The cabal had a number of ceremonial grounds and meeting places. The primary one in London was the Isis-Urania Temple, the first one established (though numbered 3 due to Westcott's fabricated story, claiming that the group was a new branch of a German cabal descended from an ancient line which had two existing temples). Aside from the Isis-Urania Temple, the cabal's most ceremonial ground and armory was located at 36 Blythe Road, Hammersmith.

Other temples included the Ahathoor Temple in Paris, where Mathers made his headquarters, and the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh, conceived as Mathers desired to go to Scotland.

### Golden-style Magic

**Golden-style Magic** (黄金系魔術, *Ōgon-kei Majutsu*?) is the system of magic developed by the Golden Dawn and used by the cabal and its successors. It uses Hermeticism and Kabbalah in its foundations, incorporating elements of Tarot, Egyptian Mythology, Greek Mythology, Enoch, and Astrology among other things.

The Golden Dawn and Golden-style cabals specialize in constructing sanctuaries and harnessing large amounts of Telesma to conduct large-scale powerful magic.

#### Group Magic

The foundation and essence of the cabal was their group magic, involving ceremonial rituals which were modeled after stage plays.

Although they studied in the same cabal, the members of the Golden Dawn each had their own distinct areas of expertise and levels of magic. However, as they were a cabal, where individual power wasn't enough, they just had to work together. The magicians carried their own specific tools, which were all symbols with their own important meanings, but were also props which could establish a major ceremony when used as a set. These included the Symbolic Weapons representing the four elements, black and white clubs representing the two pillars, tarot cards, the Banner of the West and the Banner of the East, rose cross medals, tattva, magic swords, planetary magical circles, seven-branched candleholders, oil lamps and Enochian chess pieces modelled after Egyptian deities, among others.

As the magical stage play uses a large group of people, their formation and arrangement can be altered in order to cover weak points or to reassign roles, allowing them to recover from mistakes which would be more difficult to recover from in a solo performance. The magicians of the Golden Dawn possessed a high degree of coordination, which strengthened their group performance in these ceremonies. However, for each person missing from the formation and not substituted, the more the magic will fail.

An example of this stage play ritual magic was the group ceremony used by the recreated Golden Dawn in order to jointly pursue the carriages carrying the British Royal Family, at a speed of 180km/h. For this particular ceremony, Mathers initially designated Felkin as the Praemonstrator (with another taking over after he was downed), Waite to do records and backup, and Westcott as the Imperator, letting him choose the Hiereus and Sentinel. Gardner acted as Stolistes, with Annie taking over after he was taken out. The magicians passed each other, changed lanes and swapped positions, their speeds rising and falling, their movements changing the locations of their ceremonial tools and their meanings. The group movement constructed a single large current, moving like a dragon or serpent, causing the group to pick up speed like a car shifting gear, reaching 180km/h on their own feet. Though they were running along the road and sometimes signs and streetlights, rather than running, it looked as though they were sliding along a thin layer of water.

#### GD Tarot

The Golden-style has a variation of Tarot associated with it which are used in ceremonies, known as the **GD Tarot** (GDタロット, *GD Tarotto*?). In the standard Golden-style Tarot, the Major Arcana tells the story of the Son of God, from birth to execution and resurrection, in order to draw on a portion of his power. Connected to the 22 paths on the Sephiroth, they are meant to acquire a technique of entering the realm of god with a human body, miracles which can be explained by Christianity. The four suits of the Minor Arcana are associated with the four elements and the cards can activate a spell associated with their suit's element, though they are generally intended to be used in large-scale ceremonies rather than battle.

The GD Tarot is also described as a reinterpretation using the secrets of Kabbalah in attempt to remove the original sin people are born with. Though they are intended to be used with arrangements based on the Sephiroth, it is also possible to perform a Telesma-level summoning using an alternative arrangement based on the Qliphoth, as demonstrated by Aleister Crowley.

#### Tattva

Another concept adapted by the Golden Dawn was that of **Tattva** (タットワ, *Tattowa*?)(Sanskrit for 'principle' or 'truth'), a variation of the concept of the elements found in Hindu tantrism and a number of Indian philosophical schools. There are varying numbers in the original traditions, but the one adapted by the Golden Dawn has five basic tattvas, roughly equivalent to the five classical elements found in the West. Each tattva has a specific color and symbol associated with them.

 2
 3
 4
 5

The Golden Dawn's primary usage of tattva was for a technique known as a **tattva vision**, which uses tattva cards created from a combination of the symbols as a tool for aiding and accomplishing astral projection and spiritual development.The Tattva combinations provide a technique for seeing and learning various things, with some capable of identifying and highlighting traces of residual information in a person's surroundings. Although this form of meditation is normally done using cards, the symbols can be used without them.

While it is a simple method, the cabal warned that one must not take Tattva lightly or lose sight of their objective when using it. According to Mathers himself, pressing a tattva card to one's forehead in a misguided attempt to strengthen the image in the head will trigger a malfunction in the mind. However, these dangers can be exploited - for example, applying the card to someone else's head will cause them to suffer the effects of the failed meditation and force them into a temporary state of confusion or hallucination.Tattva-based mental immersion spiritual items wielded by the reproduced Robert William Felkin were intended to drag other people's mind into the bog and remove their astral bodies, leaving their physical bodies vulnerable.

Another usage of the tattva in Golden-style magic is the use of their color arrangement to indirectly interfere with the five elements, strengthening them through emphasizing complimentary colors (e.g. green for the red-associated fire) or weakening them by adding vagueness to their outline (e.g. red for a red-associated flame), though this method was rendered obsolete by the development of methods to manipulate pure elements directly.

The symbol of the black egg can be used for an invisibility spell, referenced in Israel Regardie's grimoire.

#### Astrology

Another part of Golden-style magic involves the observation and use of stars and mysterious lights in the night sky. As well as reading the future from the stars, magicians can seal their light into talismans and amulets, and draw their power out when they see fit.

Certain Golden-style spells involving the zodiac involve the invocation of angels associated with the individual signs. The only example seen so far was used by Karasuma Fran, involving **Virgo** (乙女座, *Otomeza*?) and activated with the following chant; *“Virgo. Heh, Heh, Vau, Yod. Guide the light of the 6th Sign that has already been lost due to precession, oh angel with an 8-letter divine name. Drive out the approaching calamity!!”*. A light with color corresponding to Virgo began to build but the effects weren't seen as the Karma-bearing chain beast she was fighting interfered and caused **Aries** (おひつじ座, *Ohitsuji-za*?) to activate instead, disrupting the spell.

Attributes associated with the zodiac in Golden-style magic include the following:

## Background

### Establishment

The cabal was officially founded during the late 19th Century by William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and the unnamed founder.

One of the figures who supposedly helped in the foundation of the Golden Dawn was a woman called Anna Sprengel, who was said to have had the role of Secret Chief and as a point of contact, an existence of the type that Aleister Crowley would become. However, it is dubious as to whether she actually existed. A letter which William Wynn Westcott supposedly received from her was actually forged by him in order to give prestige to the cabal he helped found. Wanting to claim that the cabal was the continuation of an ancient Rosicrucian line, he faked a letter sent to a German cabal (whom he claimed to have two temples) as well as a response from Anna Sprengel authorizing the creation of a British branch (hence the Isis-Urania Temple being called #3), an exchange known as the Sprengel Letters.

### Golden Age

After the retirement of the unnamed founder during an unknown time between the establishment of the cabal and 1900, the Golden Dawn eventually flourished under the leadership of Mathers and Westcott. However, due to the continuous black propaganda received by magic-side organizations funded by the Roman Catholic Church during the time, the cabal remained a secret meeting place, with its members, as well as the cabal in general, still vulnerable to financial difficulty. Two of the most notable meeting places for members of the Golden Dawn were the Isis-Urania Temple in London, and another located in 36 Blythe Road, the latter of which held much of the cabal's magical artifacts.

Immediately, it became apparent that Westcott and Mathers had clashing views on the path the Golden Dawn must take. Westcott, a coroner by trade, believed that the cabal must exist while making certain compromises. On the other hand, Mathers wanted to see constant progress in the cabal as a magical society and thus, began spearheading several activities like performing ceremonies that involved the use of material extracted from living things—a taboo amongst magical societies at that time—as well as the development of a ***work kit*** (工作キット, ****work kit****?) that would grant flexibility in the way magic is created. This disparity would only intensify upon the arrival of an aspiring newcomer to the cabal, a young man named Aleister Crowley.

Despite being a relatively new member in the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley developed countless spells and spiritual items during his time in the cabal. Some of his ideas, such as the Aeons, were extreme even within the cabal and as such there were a number of people who didn't support them.

### Downfall

By 1900, the Golden Dawn was already split between the Westcott and Mathers factions. Crowley, who had decided to dismantle the cabal from within as part of his plan to save his future daughter Lilith from an untimely death (which was foreseen by his mentor Allan Bennett), provoked the two factions into fighting each other in a conflict that would later be known as the Battle of Blythe Road. The bloody onslaught cost the cabal many lives, with the casualties including both of the remaining founders, along with an unknown number of magicians from both factions. Additionally, an artifact, in the form of an arrow fashioned out of a shriveled, disembodied hand, was lost in the battle. Aleister would later disassociate himself from the Golden Dawn at the aftermath of the Battle of Blythe Road.

After the destruction of the Golden Dawn, the splinter groups had developed on their own from the Golden Dawn's legacy and progressed, still existing to this day while continuing to chaotically break apart. The cabals produced by that were known as **Golden-style cabals** (黄金系結社, *Ōgon-kei Kessha*?). Over a hundred such cabals have been officially counted in the present.

Aleister Crowley would continue to deal with the survivors of the Golden Dawn after the collapse of the main cabal. The remnants and successors were involved along with the Church when Aleister was hunted down by his enemies in the English countryside in 1947, at the end of which he was thought to have died but actually survived and escaped.

Despite the fall of the cabal, the Golden-style of magic, which had its heyday at the start of the 20th century, continued and is standard in the present day.

### Recreations

At some point after the deaths of the original members, the demon Choronzon, who had been summoned by Mathers before his death to drive Aleister to ruin and was plotting towards this end while acting as the Archbishop of Necessarius, secretly reproduced members of the original Golden Dawn and some of its later iterations through the application of Tarot-based grimoires, as part of her anti-Crowley countermeasures.

The grimoires were comprised of Tarot cards, secretly produced by Choronzon in the British Museum's repair room through selected materials. A special charcoal made from red wine and iron oxide and kneaded erasers made from breadcrumbs were used to make the rough sketches on the paper base, chosen to apply symbols of flesh and blood to the card. These sketches were colored with pigments chosen based on the personal traits of the individual to be recreated, found in things like bibliomancy, and the cards were reinforced with a thin layer of the wax used for cursed dolls.

## Chronology

### Choronzon Arc

*Main article: Choronzon Arc*

Though the members of the Golden Dawn were believed to be long dead, when Aleister Crowley went to the graveyard of Westminster Abbey in order to find Mathers' remains to use against Choronzon, he was confronted by the man himself, who was apparently alive, leading the other members of the Golden Dawn, even Mathers' former rival Westcott, against Aleister.

It was later revealed that the Golden Dawn here, including some magicians who joined after the collapse of the main cabal, were actually reproductions of the originals through Tarot-based grimoires, created by Choronzon as an anti-Crowley countermeasure. After hunting their enemy in London and pursuing the British Royal Family on the roads to Edinburgh (in order to protect the real Mathers' grave in Edinburgh Castle which could be used against Choronzon and thus themselves), Aleister managed to disrupt the flow of power to their grimoire bodies during his final battle with the reproduced Mathers, causing the reproductions to come apart and revert to cards.

Later that morning, during the attack on the Queen Britannia, when Choronzon attempted use the Honours of Scotland to hijack the UK's magical system and initiate the Ceremony of Mo Athair, the reactivated recreation of Dion Fortune made use of the essence of her fellow recreations, in an original spell bearing the full name of the cabal, which blocked the signal to Scotland, with the cards forming a vortex visible from space.

## List of Golden-style cabals

* Dawn-Colored Sunlight
* New Light (pseudo-Cabal Reserve Army)
* Exit of the Evening Dusk
* Dawn that Wipes Away Darkness
* The Daybreak (曙光, *The Daybreak*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Noon (正午, *The Noon*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Blazing Sun (炎天, *The Blazing Sun*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Sunset (夕焼け, *The Sunset*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Dusk (宵闇, *The Dusk*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Pole Star (極星, *The Pole Star*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Eclipse (日蝕, *The Eclipse*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)
* The Sunspot (黑點, *The Sunspot*?) (abbreviation, proper name unknown)