The Magister 1

by Marcus Katz

  This is best put by Maria Prophetissa, a 3rd century alchemist: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”

  2 of Wands: The journey now nears its terminus with this Minor card combination of the upper level archetype cards of The World and The Magician. This signifies that the act of spiritual transformation is now out of our hands – whilst at the very same time we feel that all is within us. This is the ‘final ambush’ that lies in wait for the journeyer in the spiritual realms, as we saw in the earlier quote from the Hermetica.

  We have to discard all that might accumulate on this way, which is a via exhaustion – a ‘way of exhaustion’.

  As A. E. Waite writes in The Other Way:

  We tried all paths, nor found a road in one,

  Sought many things beneath the wintry sun

  Which shines alone on this dim earth of ours,

  But when the barren strife at length was done

  Grace comes free, handed, with unlooked for dowers

  And shew’d the true way strewn with deathless flowers.

  Ace of Wands: At last we come to the aim of our spiritual journey in the Wands. The value system of our whole being is taken in the hand of the divine. Compare this to where we commenced, with those 10 rods on our own back, and we perceive the total exchange carried out in the journey. We have done nothing more than returned to the singular truth of the matter. We were never ourselves to begin with.[196] As A.E. Waite again put it, “The atmosphere of the divine secret consists in a great disinterest.”[197]

  THE NATURE OF THE GRADES AND INITIATION

  “There is one true charge, however, which can be laid at the door of the Guardians of the Secret Wisdom. Have they made sufficient provision for the preaching in the market-place, for the training in the Outer Court of the Temple?”

  Dion Fortune – Sane Occultism[198]

  We will now briefly survey the nature and structure of the hierarchy of the WEIS, particularly that given by the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley through the O.T.O. and the A∴A∴ occult groups with which he was involved. These systems are the bedrock of mapping magical progress and spiritual advancement in the Western system, and whilst appearing complex, are worth extensive study and utilisation.

  Vignette: Esoteric Exposure of a Newcomer

  Frater F.P. once took a friend to a Chaos magick conference, wondering what would happen if a complete newcomer to the esoteric was exposed to dramatic and challenging experience. The friend was bombarded all day by talks and discussions on radical state-change, breaking all taboos, and that reality was merely a fictional prison. In the evening, he was taken into a hall with about 60 other participants – mainly men, mainly dressed in black leather. For a further hour he was instructed to hyperventilate and chant loudly the vowel sounds of A,E,I,O, and U. This was done until the floor and the air vibrated in the now rapidly warming room.

  The participants were then moved into a circle and an invocation of the godform of Baphomet was perfomed, with images being shown of the androgyne goat-like figure, usually associated with Satanism. At this point Frater F.P. was becoming increasingly concerned about his friend’s mental state. The priest into whom Baphomet had been invoked now circled the hall, proferring a large goblet with an unidentified red liquid in it, at which point Frater F.P.’s friend balked. Standing back from the circle, he was then witness to a ‘banishment by laughter’ in which the participants smacked each other on the back whilst laughing out loud very deliberately until it became hysterical, spreading rapidly throughout the whole crowd. Frater F.P.’s friend was very silent the entire trip home and never again returned to work esoterically. We must wonder how best to initiate newcomers into this world.

  We will look at two secret orders that have been rarely written about in public, and see how the Golden Dawn system derived from sources at least a century prior to their founding in 1888. This work is unique to the Crucible and I hope that you will find it particularly fascinating in widening your awareness of our Western esoteric tradition.

  The subject of grades is often criticised as leading to elitism and over-bearing structure. The nature of the qualifications required to gain a grade and their relevance are often questioned. In a contemporary article on grades and hierarchies within the occult corpus, Phil Hine (1999), himself a practitioner of the more eclectic Chaos magick, comments on such qualifications. He writes that although there “is a general unwillingness to explicitly examine grades and roles” within the practitioner community itself:

  It must be recognised that each grade that the magician attains implies not only a recognition of various degrees of ability and accountability, but also that there is a specific task, or ‘work’ associated with the fulfillment of that grade.[199]

  These grades – often divided into 10 which correspond to the Tree of Life diagram – are found in many occult orders. It is usually accepted that the Golden Dawn was the main source of these grades, but it is less well known that in fact, the grades were being used at least a century prior to the Golden Dawn by a little-studied (in English) German group, the Golden and Rosy Cross (G&RC). Whilst their work was alchemical in nature, they used the names for each grade later utilised by the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.) and then the Golden Dawn. We will trace some examples of what you would be expected to learn in such groups, so that within the Crucible you can begin to grasp the scope of later studies should you chose to progress your work in this tradition.

  The S.R.I.A.

  Much of the Golden Dawn structure is pre-existent in the S.R.I.A., of which Mathers, Westcott and Woodman (the founders of the Golden Dawn) were all members. In a 1953 reprint of the S.R.I.A. grade documents, it is indicated that there are three orders:

  First Order: Student

  Second Order: Teacher

  Third Order: Master

  The teaching syllabus for these Orders is eclectic; indeed, the lecture in the fourth grade of Philosophus is on religion and philosophy, including Judaism to existentialism. The specific teaching for the grades is given below:

  Grade 1: Zelator - Numerology, the symbol of the jewel

  Grade 2: Theoricus - Elements, composition of man, worlds

  Grade 3: Practicus - Symbolism of the cross, alchemy

  Grade 4: Philosophus - Religions and philosophies of the world

  Grade 5: Adeptus Minor - Teacher, tetractys[200]

  The presence of qualification is seen clearly within these pamphlets, rituals and writings. Therefore, the Philosophus would be asked:

  Frater [----] your attainments in the practice of Alchymy have been approved ... do you now earnestly desire to be received into the grade of Philosophus?

  Within the Second Order, it is stated that a year must elapse before a candidate can be accepted into the grade of Adeptus Major. This is the only grade division marked temporally; signalling the different transition between the Orders. The work of the Adeptus Major is also of a marked difference – now internally focused rather than externally, the Adeptus Major is to work upon the “importance of contemplation,” and the issues of “self-development.” The aim is that:

  The life of the Adept [is] well spent in thought, word and deed should be a fitting preparation for a calm repose.

  Beyond this grade in the S.R.I.A., the Adeptus Exemptus was to receive the “guide studies of the Philosophi” and engage in “preparation for death.”

  The teachings of the syllabus were supplemented, in a precursor to the Golden Dawn ‘Flying Rolls’, by the Clavicula Rosicruciana, covering a diverse range of supplementary material, written by Woodman and Mathers, including:

  1. The Certificate and Seal;

  2. The Four Ancients;

  3. The 10 sephiroth;

  4. Beraisheth;

  5. The Four Pillars and I.N.R.I.

  We therefore see that the Golden Dawn was a practical extension of the S.R.I.A. curriculum writ large, and that within both groups, the material was both exp
ected to be learnt – aimed at an overall and progressive transformation – and tested before progress was attained.

  [ILLUS. SRIA MEMBERS including A. E. Waite (front left to viewer)]

  The Golden Dawn

  So what is it that a Golden Dawn initiate would be required to learn from the curriculum? A paper of 1897 given by McGregor Mathers (1854-1918) to the members of the Second Order in Caledonia indicates the regulations for progression through the grades of the Order. However, it also demonstrates important aspects of the political use of the curriculum in controlling the membership and in positioning the Order versus other groups:

  Members of the Second Order in Caledonia are requested not to arrange privately for Second order teaching with private members in Anglia or elsewhere ... The Chief Adept – the G.H. Frater D.D.C.F [MacGregor-Mathers] – is now the source of all official instruction.

  […]

  The works of the Lake Harris school are better avoided. The H.B. of L. is condemned, as of course are Luciferian or Palladistic teachings. The so-called Rose Croix of Sor Peladan is considered as an ignorant perversion of the Name, containing no true knowledge and not even worthy of the title of an occult order. The Black Mass is naturally by its own confession of the evil magic school. The Martinists, as long as they adhere to the teachings of their Founder, should not be out of harmony with the R.R. et A.C.

  Moving on from this positioning, the document goes on to summarise the work of the Grades between Neophyte Adeptus Minor and Theoricus Adeptus Minor. These items of work relate to an attached catalogue of manuscripts and Flying Rolls – additional papers of instruction. Thus, in the Second Stage of Zelator Adeptus Minor:

  11. Receive and study Flying Rolls 11, 12, 14, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, 30, and may now pass C, G, and E examinations.

  These Flying Rolls enumerated include instruction on clairvoyance, telesmatic images, talismans, perspectives on the psychic constitution of man, planets and tattwas, and skrying rules. They also included a paper on administration and the use of the ritual implements. That the curriculum was open to variation is intimated:

  By permission of the Chief Adept, 6, 7, and 8 may be taken immediately after 3. Then 4 and 5.

  The work required in these instructions is varied, ranging from some items which are to be committed to memory, and others which are “to be attentively studied though not learned by heart.” Rituals were received, and implements, such as the Rose Cross, were to be constructed and consecrated. After receiving Ritual G, the Neophyte Adeptus Minor would be expected to make and consecrate the five implements: the magical sword and the four elemental weapons, being the wand (Fire), dagger (Air), cup (Water), and pentacle (Earth).

  It is apparent that many members constructed such implements for their magical working. The poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), who was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1890, describes not only how “we copied out everything we could borrow or find that bore upon our subject, including the Jewish Schemahamphorasch with its seventy- two names of God in Hebrew characters ...” but also constructed the four elemental weapons and the Lotus Wand, his pentacle bearing his motto ‘Demon est Deus Inversus’. A plate in Gilbert’s Golden Dawn Scrapbook shows a similar item of regalia, the Rose-Croix lamen, as created by another member, Benjamin Cox.

  It was Yeats who strongly defended the magical curriculum and the grade system. He wrote in a pamphlet, ‘Is the Order of the R.R. and A.C. to Remain a Magical Order?’ (March 1901),[201] in defence of the system of examinations that Waite was looking to abolish:

  The passing by their means from one degree to another is an evocation of the Supreme Life, a treading of a symbolic path, a passage through a symbolic gate, a climbing towards the light which it is the essence of our system to believe flows continually from the lowest of the invisible Degrees to the highest of the Degrees that are known to us.

  Here Yeats echoes the sentiment that the examinations and grades are based on the “essence of our system” and not, as he continued later in the same document, “the multiplication of petty formulae.”

  Howe (1972)[202] gives an even more advanced curriculum for the grade of Practicus Adeptus Minor, which was issued by Mathers and Westcott in 1896-1897 but was unlikely implemented. It clearly demonstrates the practical nature of the work expected of the candidate for the “rigid examination,” some examples of which include:

  2. Development of the sense of Clairaudience in the Spirit Vision.

  4. The method of bringing the Divine White Brilliance into Action by a certain Ritual of Ascent and Descent.

  12. Tarot Divination translated into Magical action.

  We see here the translation of theoretical or passive skills, such as divination and visualisation, into active skills such as invocation and using tarot for ‘magical action’.

  The O.T.O. and the A∴ A∴

  Without doubt, the prolific work of Aleister Crowley following his expulsion from the Golden Dawn, his involvement with the German O.T.O., and his development of his own order, the A∴A∴, is fundamental to modern magick. We cannot survey the entire corpus of work in this volume, so we will examine Crowley’s description of the lower grades.

  Although warning that “these Grades are not necessarily attained fully, and in strict consecution, or manifested wholly on all planes,” he does append a more detailed account, as well as a summary, of the training plan, the first part of which includes the following expectations:

  Student. His business is to acquire a general intellectual knowledge of all systems of attainment, as declared in the prescribed books.

  Probationer. His principal business is to begin such practices as he may prefer, and to write a careful record of the same for one year.

  Neophyte. Has to acquire perfect control of the Astral Plane.

  Zelator. His main work is to achieve complete success in Asana and Pranayama. He also begins to study the formula of the Rosy Cross.

  Practicus. Is expected to complete his intellectual training, and in particular to study the Qabalah.

  Philosophus. Is expected to complete his moral training. He is tested in Devotion to the Order.[203]

  The Crucible Club itself represents the Probationer grade in this system a year’s worth of study. These brief outlines contain a depth of description as to the likely challenges, experience, work, and insight offered by each progressive grade – the testing of devotion that occurs at Philosophus, whilst unique to every individual who goes through it, is surprisingly predictable for that grade and for all who encounter it.

  THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

  Potential students of the Western esoteric corpus were likely to approach a number of groups for their occult education. A private letter from Dr. S.W. Brathwaite to Gerald Yorke in 1932, whilst expressing an interest in the A∴A∴, also lists the student’s active and inactive membership of many other groups:

  Active – University of the Mystic Brotherhood; Chronzon [sic] Club; Unity’s Practical Christianity; Member of the Great White Brotherhood; Hatha and Raja Yoga; Coffman School of Numerology; Inactive – Rosicrucian Fellowship; Clymer’s Works.[204]

  This type of curriculum esoterica vitae appears to demonstrate – other than the eclectic nature of such associations – an unwavering search for a source of ‘real’ esoteric knowledge. It is as if the student is suggesting that they have not found what they are searching for elsewhere, or have been left unsatisfied, and now believe that in the group to which they are applying is indeed the ‘true secret knowledge’ which they seek. This suggestion is made more explicit in some applications than others. It demonstrates that the drive of a student to locate the esoteric teaching is undiminished by disappointment in any one group or failure to learn what might have been taught.

  A student would often move from one group to another, perhaps on the presumption that surely one of them held the secret teaching or perhaps wondering if the disappointment was perhaps a test or occult ‘blind’ to the hidden teachings. This peripatetic activity ca
used a problem to groups whose singular capital was their teaching material, in avoiding that material being disseminated to other groups, leading to various attempts at oaths, secrecy and outright banning of individuals joining where an affiliation to another group was known. My personal favourite is the document which stated it was personally and specifically ‘magnetised’ to the individual and its words would not have the same impact if read by someone to whom it was not thus magnetised.

  The response by Crowley to such enquiries during this time was to request a diary or journal be submitted, suggest the first topics of study and, in this case, provide an examination paper to be completed and returned.[205] The areas of study for the initial grades were that the Probationer should maintain a diary, a Neophyte should seek to gain “complete control of the Astral Plane” and the Zelator should master pranayama – the yoga of breath – and asana – the yoga of physical posture – in addition to discovering the “Formula of the Rosy Cross.”[206]

  The examination paper given to Dr. Brathwaite was typical:

  Give the principle correspondences of the letter Teth, and your comments.

  Explain the real value of Yoga practice for anyone attempting to make spiritual progress.

  What do you know of the psychology of Buddhism?

  How would you set to work to produce a magical thunder-storm, or to acquire by means of a magical ceremony a book of which you were in need?