The Golden Dawn Page 8
Very similar in some respects is the diagram revealed in the Philosophus grade. As the divine peace of the Garden of Eden was manifested during the water grade, so in this grade of Philosophus, the power of fire is shown to have called forth catastrophe. Formerly coiled beneath the tree, the hydra-headed dragon in this diagram has usurped its proper place. Its several horned heads wind their way up into the very structure of the Tree of Life, even unto Daath at the foot of the supernals. Lured downwards by the tree of knowledge—and remembering in what sense the Bible speaks of the verb “to know,” we gather that the root of the trouble was an imperfect apprehension of creative power—towards the “darkly splendid world wherein continually lieth a faithless depth,” Eve, the lower self, ceases to give support to Adam. She has yielded to the awful fascination of the awakening psyche. Far easier is it to fall than to climb to the distant heights. Yet only from one viewpoint is the Fall catastrophic. The awareness of the rise of the dragon endows man also with consciousness of power—and power is life and progress. The dragon stands as the symbol of the great enemy to be overcome, and, as the task of equilibration proceeds, the great prize awaiting success.
The Fall as a state of consciousness is analogous to that condition described by various mystics as the Dark Night of the Soul. It is accompanied by a sense of intolerable dryness, a dreaded awareness of the fact that all the powers of the soul seem dead, and the mind’s vision closed in dumb protest, as it were, against the harsh discipline of the work itself. A thousand and one seductions will tend to lure the candidate from the contemplation of the magical goal, and there will be presented to him a thousand and one means of breaking in spirit his vow to “persevere in the divine science” without breaking it in letter. And it will appear that the mind itself will run riot and become unstable, warning the candidate that it were better for him to enjoy a lull in his magical operations. This state is allegorically referred to by the alchemists in their descriptions of the poisonous dragon that follows upon the corruption of their First Matter. Vaughan calls it “a horrible devouring Dragon—creeping and weltering in the bottom of her cave, without wings. Touch her not by any means, not so much as with thy hands, for there is not upon earth such a violent, transcendent poison.” But as the mystics teach, if this condition be patiently endured, it passes, a higher spiritual consciousness gradually dawning in the heart and mind. So also in the alchemical writings, we find that Vaughan observes: “As thou hast begun so proceed, and this Dragon will turn to a Swan, but more white than the hovering virgin snow when it is not yet sullied with the earth.”
The Qabalistic Sephirah of Daath is the conjunction of Chokmah and Binah on the Tree of Life, the child of Wisdom and Understanding—knowledge. It refers to the symbolic sphere formed within or above the ruach by means of experience obtained, and this assimilated becomes transmuted into intuition and faculty of mind. But fundamentally it is the ascent of the dragon or, if you wish, an upwelling of the Unconscious archetypes—a highly dangerous and unbalancing ascent, until they are assimilated to consciousness—which first renders Daath a possibility. It is the Fall that is responsible for the acquisition of self-knowledge. “Thus it stands proven,” claims Blavatsky, “that Satan, or the red Fiery Dragon, the ‘Lord of Phosphorus’ and Lucifer, or ‘Light-bearer,’ is in us; it is our Mind—our tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and saviour from pure animalism.”
In the evolutionary scheme, the Fall occurs through a higher type of intelligence coming into close contact with nascent humanity, thus stimulating the psyche of the race—or so the magical tradition has it. The recapitulation of this process within the individual sphere of consciousness proceeds through the technique of initiation whereby the Red Dragon is stirred into activity through contact with the fructifying powers of the elements, invoked through the skill and power of a trained initiator. The use of the divine prerogative, brought about by the magic of everyday experience, the awakening of Daath, brings disaster at first because the awakened psyche is imperfectly understood and so abused for personal ends. But that very disaster and that abuse confers the consciousness of self, and is instrumental, at least in part, in breaking up the primitive participation mystique. Consequently, the realization of sorrow as it impinges on the ego, or at least the sense of personal mental and emotional discomfort, and an understanding of its causes, invariably constitute the first impetus to perform the Great Work, even as it comprises the motive first to seek the services and aid of the analytical psychologist. This impetus and this self-consciousness are the prime implications of Daath. Its signification is a higher type of consciousness, the beginning of a spiritual rebirth. It acts as a self-evolved link between the higher Genius, on the one hand, at peace in its supernal abode, and, on the other hand, the human soul bound by its Fall to the world of illusion and sense and matter. Not until that self-consciousness and acquired knowledge are turned to noble and altruistic ends, so long will sorrow and suffering be the inevitable result. Continually will the Red Dragon, the inverted power of the eros, ravish the little kingdom of self until such time as we open ourselves to the deepest levels of our unconsciousness, reconciling and uniting them with our conscious outlook, thus conquering the foe by driving it back to its proper realm. In such a way may we use, but neither ignore nor repress, the experience of life and its fruit to transcend our own personal limitations and attain to a participation mystique on a higher and self-conscious level.
Let me quote a few especially appropriate lines from Jung in connection with this Fall, when the fundamental basis of the ruach has been attracted to the kingdom of shells and when Malkuth has been disassociated from the other Sephiroth: “Consciousness thus torn from its roots and no longer able to appeal to the authority of the primordial images, possesses a Promethean freedom, it is true, but it also partakes of the nature of a godless hybris. It soars above the earth, even above mankind, but the danger of capsizing is there, not for every individual to be sure, but collectively for the weak members of such a society, who again Promethean-like, are bound by the unconscious to the Caucasus.”
For the adept to be cut off from his roots, from contact with the vitalizing and necessary basis of his Unconsciousness, will never do. He must unite and integrate the various levels of his entire Tree. His task must be to train and develop the titanic forces of his own underworld, so that they become as a powerful but docile beast whereon he may ride.
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The Adeptus Minor grade continues the theme of these two diagrams. Escorted into the Vault, the aspirant is shown the lid of the tomb of Osiris, the Pastos, wherein is buried our father, Christian Rosenkreutz, and on that lid is a painting that brings fulfillment, as it were, to the narrative of the preceding diagrams. It is divided into two sections. The lower half of the painting depicts a figure of Adam, similar to his presentation in the Practicus grade diagram, though here the heads of the dragon are falling back from the Tree, showing the Justified One, the illuminated adept, by his immolation and self-sacrifice rescuing the fallen kingdom of his natural self from the clutches of an outraged eros. But above this, as though to show the true nature behind the deceptive appearance of things is illustrated a noble figure of majesty and divinity described in the ritual in these words. “And being turned I saw seven golden light-bearers, and in the midst of the light-bearers, one like unto the Ben Adam, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt with a golden girdle. His head and his hair were white as snow, and his eyes as flaming fire; his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace. And his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars and out of his mouth went the sword of flame, and his countenance was as the sun in his strength.”
It is to effect this redemption of the personality, to regenerate the power of the dragon, and attempt to bring the individual to some realization of his potential godhead, that is the object of the Adeptus Minor ceremony.
It is for this reason that I hold that the Golden Dawn mag
ic, the technique of initiation, is of supreme and inestimable importance to mankind at large. In it the work of academic psychology may find a logical conclusion and fruition, so that it may develop further its own particular contribution to modern life and culture. For this psycho-magical technique of ceremonial initiation indicates the psychological solution of the anima problem. “Arise! Shine! For thy light is come!”
Between the grade of Philosophus and the Portal, an interval of seven months was prescribed, the regimen of the planets. During that period, devised to assist the gradual fructification of the seeds planted within, a review was advised of all the preceding studies. Such a review certainly was imperative. As one of the Chiefs of the Order expressed it: “Remember that there is hardly a circumstance in the rituals even of the First Order which has not its special meaning and application, and which does not conceal a potent magical formula. These ceremonies have brought thee into contact with certain forces which thou hast now to learn to awaken in thyself, and to this end, read, study, and re-read that which thou hast already received. Be not sure even after the lapse of much time that thou hast fully discovered all that is to be learned from these. And to be of use unto thee, this must be the work of thine own inner self, thine own and not the work of another for thee so that thou mayest gradually attain to the knowledge of the Divine Ones.”
The grade of the Portal, which conferred upon the candidate the title of Lord of the Paths of the Portal of the Vault of the Adepti, is not referred to a Sephirah as such. It may, however, be considered as an outer court to Tiphareth, exactly as the Adeptus Minor ceremony may be considered Tiphareth within. Its technical attribution is the element of Akasa, spirit or ether, that is magically invoked by the usual procedure of invoking pentagrams and the vibration of divine names following upon the conjuration of the powers of the four subsidiary elements. To this grade, there is attached no elemental prayer as in the former grades, but there is one remarkable invocation employed which bears quoting here. In full temple, the English version is not used, but it is vibrated in the original Enochian or angelic tongue—a language which is at once sonorous, vibrant, and dramatically impressive. The following is the full version of which an abridged one was normally used in the temple: “I reign over you (here the Order version names the three Archangels of the element), saith the God of Justice, in power exalted above the firmament of wrath. In whose hands the sun is as a sword and the moon as a through-thrusting fire. Who measureth your garments in the midst of my vestures and trussed you together as the palms of my hands. Whose seat I garnished with the fire of gathering. Who beautified your garments with admiration. To whom I made a law to govern the holy ones, and delivered you a rod with the ark of knowledge. Moreover, ye lifted up your voices and sware obedience and faith to him that liveth and triumpheth. Whose beginning is not nor end cannot be. Who shineth as a flame in the midst of your palaces and reigneth amongst you as the balance of righteousness and truth. Move therefore and show yourselves. Open the mysteries of your creation. Be friendly unto me, for I am the servant of the same your God, a true worshiper of the Highest.”
This grade, referred to the veil Paroketh, which separates the First and Second Orders, is intermediate between the purely elemental grades and the spiritual grade of Adeptus Minor. A crown to the four lower elements, this rite formulates above earth, air, water, and fire, the uppermost point of the pentagram, revealing the administration of the light over and through the kingdom of the natural world. It concerns itself with the recapitulation of the former grades, coordinating and equilibrating the elemental self which, symbolically sacrificed upon the mystical altar, is offered to the service of the higher genius. In that grade, too, aspiration to the divine is strongly stressed as the faculty by which the veil of the inner sanctuary may be rent. It is the way to realization. The five Paths leading from the grades of the First to the Second Orders are symbolically traversed, and their symbols impressed within the sphere of sensation.
A gestation period of at least nine months had to elapse prior to initiation to the grade of Adeptus Minor, and since there can be no misunderstanding the purpose and nature of this beautiful ceremony it requires the minimum of comment from my pen. It explains itself completely in one of the speeches: “Buried with that light in a mystical death, rising again in a mystical resurrection, cleansed and purified through him our Master, O brother of the cross and the rose. Like him, O adepts of all ages, have ye toiled. Like him have ye suffered tribulation. Poverty, torture, and death have ye passed through; they have been but the purification of the gold. In the alembic of thine heart, through the athanor of affliction, seek thou the true stone of the wise.”
The form of this ritual is beautiful in its simplicity and warrants a brief description. First of all, the candidate is led in, arrayed with insignia and badges and calling himself by his various titles and mottoes. But he is warned that not in any vainglorious spirit are the mysteries to be approached, but in simplicity alone. This is the signal for him to be divested of all his ornaments and insignia, and by the temple entrance, just prior to being bound upon a large upstanding cross of wood, he stands alone, clad in a simple unornamented black gown. The reader is earnestly recommended to study this ritual again and again, until almost it becomes a part of his very life, incorporated into the fabric of his being, for herein are highly important and significant formulae of mystical aspiration and of practical magic. In it is exemplified the technical “Dying God” formula about which in The Golden Bough Frazer has written so eloquently. Examples of this are to be found in every mythology and every mystical religion that our world has ever known. But I doubt that it has ever attained to a more clarified and definite expression than in this ceremony of the Adeptus Minor grade. For we are clearly taught by precept and by example that we are, in essence, gods of great power and spirituality who died to the land of our birth in the Garden of Hesperides, and mystically dying descended into hell. And moreover the ritual demonstrates that like Osiris, Christ, and Mithra, and many another type of god-man, we too may rise from the tomb and become aware of our true divine natures. The principal clause of the lengthy obligation assumed while bound to the cross, indicating the trend of its teaching, and the import of its objective, is: “I further solemnly promise and swear that, with the divine permission, I will from this day forward apply myself unto the Great Work, which is so to purify and exalt my spiritual nature that with 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; and that in this event, I will not abuse the great power entrusted to me.”
The preface to the assumption of the obligation is under these circumstances a tremendously impressive occurrence, and few could fail to be even faintly moved by it. It consists of an invocation of an Angelic power: “In the divine name I.A.O., I invoke thee thou great avenging angel HUA, that thou mayest invisibly place thy hand upon the head of this aspirant in attestation of his obligation …”
It is not difficult to realize that this is a critical and important phase of the ceremony. During this obligation, because of the symbolism attached to it and because of the active aspiration that is induced at this juncture, illumination may quite easily occur. In one of the documents describing certain effects ensuing from this initiation, one of the Chiefs has written, that the object of the ceremony conceived as a whole “is especially intended to effect the change of the consciousness into the neschamah, and there are three places where this can take place. The first is when the aspirant is on the cross, because he is so exactly fulfilling the symbol of the abnegation of the lower self and the union with the higher.”
The obligation assumed, the candidate is now removed from the cross, and the officers then narrate to him the principal facts in the history of the founder of the Order—Christian Rosenkreutz. On a previous page was given a summary of these historical facts. When the history lecture mentions the discovery of the vault wherein the tomb and body of the illustrious Fa
ther were discovered, one of the initiating adepts draws aside a curtain, admitting the candidate to a chamber erected in the midst of the temple similar to that described in the lecture. A few words roughly describing it may not be considered amiss. As a climax to the very simple temple furniture of the Outer grades, it comes as a psychological spasm and as a highly significant symbol. The vault itself is a small seven-sided chamber, each side representing one of the seven planets, with their host of magical correspondences. The medieval Rosicrucian manifesto the Fama Fraternitatis, translated in Arthur Edward Waite’s Real History of the Rosicrucians, describes it at great length, though I shall here quote but briefly: “We opened the door, and there appeared to our sight a vault of seven sides and seven corners, every side five foot broad and the height of eight foot. Although the sun never shined in this vault, nevertheless it was enlightened with another sun, which had learned this from the sun, and was situated in the upper part of the centre of the ceiling. In the midst, instead of a tombstone, was a round altar … Now, as we had not yet seen the dead body of our careful and wise Father, we therefore removed the altar aside; then we lifted up a strong plate of brass, and found a fair and worthy body, whole and unconsumed. …”
Around this fundamental symbolism, the Golden Dawn adepts, displaying a genius of extraordinary insight and synthesis, had built a most awe-inspiring superstructure. The usual Order symbolism of the light was represented by a white triangle centered by the rose—this placed upon the ceiling. The floor design was so painted as to represent the Red Dragon and the forces of the primitive archetypes upon which the candidate trod as emblematic of his conquest. Placed in the centre of the Vault was the Pastos of Rosenkreutz—though the Pastos is also referred to as the tomb of Osiris the Justified One. Both of these beings may be considered as the type and symbol of the higher and divine genius. Immediately above this coffin rested the circular altar mentioned in the Fama. It bore paintings of the Kerubic emblems, and upon these were placed the four elemental weapons and a cross, the symbol of resurrection. At one point in the ceremony, the acting Hierophant, or Chief Adept as he is now called, is interred in the Pastos as though to represent the aspirant’s higher self which is hidden and confined within the personality, itself wandering blindly, lost in the dark wilderness. The whole concatenation of symbols is an elaborate and dramatic portrayal of the central theme of the Great Work. In a word, it depicts the spiritual rebirth or redemption of the candidate, his resurrection from the dark tomb of mortality through the power of the Holy Spirit.