Magical systems: Golden Dawn

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Maia
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Magical systems: Golden Dawn

Post by Maia »

For the next in my series of posts about magical systems I'll describe the Golden Dawn, probably the most important and influential system within the Western magical tradition of the past couple of centuries.

The Golden Dawn was an order of initiates founded in 1887 by Wynn Westcott and MacGregor Mathers in London. It was a direct offshoot of Freemasonry, and its London temple continued to meet at the masonic hall for its entire existence. Like Freemasonry it was highly structured, with all sorts of complicated procedures and official positions, but unlike Freemasonry it allowed women to join, and practiced magic.

The magical system devised by the Golden Dawn was based on the Cabala, a Jewish system of mysticism that divides the universe, and everything in it, into ten spheres. These are connected by 22 paths, corresponding to letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 Major Arcana Tarot cards. The goal of the initiate is to ascend the ten spheres from the lowest to the highest, by means of the 22 paths. This was done through a series of guided meditations and ritual actions, often using Hebrew terminology. The order also practiced astral projection, and the invoking of Ancient Egyptian deities in a form of controlled spirit possession.

The Golden Dawn suffered a schism around 1900 as a result of the actions of one of its newer members, Aleister Crowley, who later went on to greater infamy. Westcott had already resigned by then, and Mathers was forced out in a coup, and the Irish poet W. B. Yeats took over for a while. By this time the order had a number of branches around Britain, as well as a few abroad. It eventually split into two rival orders, but these had ceased to function by the 1920s, except two temples, one in Bristol and the other in New Zealand.

Every magical order that has existed since the Golden Dawn has in some way been influenced by it, as has Wicca.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Magical systems: Golden Dawn

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

ffs
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