The Great success of the Golden Dawn, a Hermetic society presenting the mystical Kabbalah, Alchemy, Astrology, Tarot, the medieval occult sciences, and Gnostic and Neoplatonic philosophy; in a systematic and organized manner, was that it found an eager audience and never had fewer than 300 members during the decade 1890-1900. It brought about the current interest in Tarot and Astrology, as well as certain kinds of New Age and ‘channeled’ literature. It presented the greatest single challenge to Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, even allowing that many were members of both. Great Britain, having conquered India, found itself being ‘invaded’ by very profound, subtle Indian systems of theology, philosophy and yoga. The Golden Dawn set out to present a ‘western’ path of self-discovery and spiritual growth.

 Even with the publication of WB Yeats’ pamphlet “Is the Golden Dawn to Remain a Magical Order?” the process which would lead to its fissuring into several sects was well under way. The overbearing manner of Mathers, who claimed sole linkage and audience with the Secret Chiefs (the Golden Dawn’s equivalent of the Transcendent masters, the Great White Brotherhood, or the Mahatmas of Theosophy) lead to his alienation and increasing isolation from key persons within his Order. I think Mathers did have psychic linkage with certain Chiefs of some kind, but they were minor Spirits, and were ultimately unreliable. Both his absolute certainty and his disregard of social skills pointed to this.

Yeats advised remaining loyal to Mathers through the breakup period, seeing this the best of several unfortunate options. But the disparate elements within the order, continued to move apart. Yeats wasn’t interested in the GD’s historical authority, but in its methods.

 The current opinion among scholars of this period is that it was Mathers’ overbearing, dictatorial manner which lead to the Golden Dawns breakup. Of the various factions, Felkins Lodge, Stella Matutina (Morning-Star), went on a psychic search for the Sun Masters. Brodie-Innes’ Amen-Ra #6 in Edinburgh gave rise to the Cromlech Solar Temple. Florence Farr and Alan Bennett went off to Sri Lanka to practice yoga and Buddhism. Waite, who brought Tarot to popular culture with his beautiful Pre-Raphaelite deck, purged all magical work from his new ‘Holy Order of the Golden Dawn:’ Egyptian Gods were purged, replaced by Christian Angels. Another branch from MorningStar became the Guild of St Raphael, a healing society absorbed into the Church of England. And other factions went in other directions.

 But my studies discovered other, more subtle but more powerful mistakes, which date back to the very theoretical foundations of the Order itself. What I wish to explain is the impact of moving 5 of the 7 planetary attributions of the Sephirot (Divine Emanations) of the traditional Kabbalistic Tree of Life. For example, the Moon was related to Malkuth, Clearly visible on Kircher’s 1652 Sephirothic Tree of Life diagram,(fig 1) Mercury assigned to Yesod on the central pillar, Venus to Hod and Mars to Netzach (victory). The Sun is assigned to Tiphereth, Jupiter to Chesed, and Saturn to Geburah (Pachad, fear). So moving the Moon to Yesod causes each subsequent planetary attribution to move up by one, so that Saturn is bumped up into Binah, one of the 3 Supernals, abandoning the other planets in Yetzirah. The new Golden Dawn assignments did not change Sun or Jupiter.

Saturn, isolated in Binah from the other planets left in Yetzirah could not do its important work of proper structuring, and discipline, in Skrying in the Spirit Vision, for example, and thus was lost to the Golden Dawn. The Sephirot Netzach, Victory, obviously Martian, became the home of Venus. Venus was moved up so Mercury had to be moved to Hod to take the place of Venus. And moving Mercury, the Androgyne, off of the central Tree Trunk or Pillar and over onto the Feminine Pillar to Hod, Glory, surrenders the insight of Mercury as the androgyne, the union of opposites, the Mysterium Coniunctionis.(1) It looses Mercury as both reconciler of opposites, and the primordial Divine union of the nature of these opposites, such as Christ and Lucifer before they were separated. Such a Divine union or restitution of incompatible opposites can only take place on the Central Pillar of the Tree of Life, because the Tree embraces everything, both good and evil.(Isaiah 45:7 and Amos 3:6) The Golden Dawn was thus severely hobbled from the beginning. The reconciliation of seemingly incompatible natures could not take place in it.

The novel Golden Dawn movement of the Devil, or Baphomet, the Goat of Mendes, which is clearly androgyne, off the central channel from Yesod to Tipheret, was also very unsettling and unfortunate.
 Dion Fortune, of the Hermes Lodge #28, under Felkins students, was zealous in her practices to an extent equal to the greatest, wrote that she found she had to contain and ritually invoke Hod, when she attempted Venus’ work in Netzach. She termed it ‘balancing,’ but for whatever reason it seems to point to the actual Venusian nature of Hod, and her intuition of it. Her Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage expressed the Rosicrucian Great Rite publicly, for the first time, since Thomas Vaughn’s Aurora Consergiens.

Examples of the losses to the Golden Dawn by Mathers’ innovations abound. In Eliphas Levis’ system, in on the 1652 Tree layout, the Emperor and Empress Paths cross in Da’at, ‘Knowledge’ in the Biblical sense. The message of Divine sexual unity and equality couldn’t be clearer. This was also lost to the Golden Dawn. Mathers’ own marriage, with no sexual consummation, seems consistent with this.

By 1810 Tarot cards were being used as symbols in Masonic-Rosicrucian Initiations in such distant places as Russia(2) but Eliphas Levi was the 1st to set down an organized relationship of the Tarot to the Kabbalah.

Continental Rosicrucian and Grande Orient Lodges still conform to Levi’s Tarot placement on the 1652 attributions, as is attested to by Tavaglione’s Stairs of Gold Tarot deck and Mouni Sadhu’s Tarot.( Mouni Sadhu was born an ethnic German in Australia. A long resident in Poland, he became a disciple of Ramana Maharshi and Advaita Vedanta) The Golden Dawn made 2 serious changes in the sequence of the Tarot Majors. One was the switching of the places of VIII Justice and XI Strength. This is unfortunate because it looses Justices’ connection with Saturn.

 In the older assignments of Tarot Majors to the Paths on the Tree of Life, the Magician went to the top of the Male Pillar and Chokmah; and the Priestess went to the top of the Female Pillar and Binah. But the moving of the Fool from its traditional older place as the aspirant or Zelator leaving Malkuth and placing it before #I, the Magician, was most egregious and unbalanced the sexual attributions of several of the Tarot Majors on the Paths of the Tree of Life. Waite’s deck, derived from the GD has the Fool going to the Male Pillar but about to step off a precipice. Becoming a Fool in the sense of a Parsifal, a ‘blessed Fool,’ is an important stage on any spiritual path but it is not superior to the Magi or a Magician. The proper balance of the male and female Pillars, Jachin and Boaz, was lost to the Golden Dawn.

Prior to his publication of Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Waite went back to the older, traditional XX-0-XXI arrangement (Judgement, Fool, World). And Papus, a disciple of Eliphas Levi, in France, joined Moina and MacGregor Mathers Ahathor #7 Temple in Paris, yet still kept to the XX-0-XXI sequence, in his Tarot of the Bohemians.

So the argument that Eliphas Levi deliberately misplaced the Fool to hide the true esoteric sequence, as was advanced by the Golden Dawn, and always maintained by Crowley, is in trouble, unless one argues that Papus, Wirth and Mouni Sadhu all felt the French still needed to be fooled. And that what was now public knowledge in England had to remain hidden from the French!

 So who was the originator of this unbalanced placement of the Fool Tarot card? We know that the Cipher Manuscripts linked the use of Tarot Cards as Kabbalistic symbols, to the traditional 18th century Rosy and Golden Cross 5 grade ritual initiations, leading to Adept. And we know that when these were received by Kenneth Mackenzie, in 1870, they still followed the sequence of Eliphas Levi, the XX-0-XXI sequence(2). Now we know that RW Little founded the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1866, with the grade ritual initiation manuscripts and authority of Mackenzie. We also know that the set of forged Cipher Manuscripts, containing quotations from Budge’s Egyptian Book of the Dead, also followed the XX-0-XXI sequence. Rosicrucians may have been chagrinned by the discovery of this forgery, but this also unwittingly proved that even at such a late date as 1885, English Rosicrucians still followed the Judgement-Fool-World sequence of Levi. That at this late date in England, Eliphas Levi’s sequence was still held, on a proven forged and thus dated document attests to its authority and narrows down considerably the period of time within which the changes in Tarot Major placements must have taken place. These manuscripts were received by RW Little, a student of the works of Eliphas Levi; and passed to Dr. Woodman, a specialist in Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Latin.

It was the date of the Cyphers (1809) which was forged, not the contents. Waite said, “it is unsafe to challenge their remote German connection;” [that is to the older Rose and Gold Cross] Woodman set forth the Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and Kabbalism which would be used by the Golden Dawn. ( Briefly, Gnosticism is Dualism, Neoplatonism is Monism, and the Kabbalah follows a difficult but creative path between them)

 Woodman worked with his fellow Soc. Ros. in Ang brother Rev A Woodford, also a Mason and clergyman,(3) who contributed an authentic 5 Grade Ritual outline, and the John Dee Enochian system, and the Crystal gazing methods of Frederick Hockley. Dr Wynn Westcott worked with them and proposed the formation of “a society for the study of the medieval occult sciences,” with all of these. This would be known as the Golden Dawn. It’s distant antecedents were Society of the Shining Light of Dawn of 1810 headed by the Kabbalist Johann Frederick Falk, ‘the Falcon,’ and the ‘Toward the Rising Dawn’ a Jewish Masonic Lodge in Frankfort. Lord Bulwer Lytton, the author, was associated with a French Lodge of this Order.

 This, the actual slow germination of these ideas and practices which would become the Golden Dawn is much more interesting than the fictitious history, advanced by Dr Westcott. How could this fine, educated and principled man concoct a fabricated charter coming from a Fraulein A Sprengel of Nuremburg? The most tolerant or generous probability is that he was bound by Masonic Oath not to reveal his actual sources.

 This brings us back to the issue of who moved the Fool Tarot card to a different initiation sequence and who moved the moon to Yesod; and Mercury to the feminine Pillar? And changed the Cypher Manuscripts as well. When Westcott in 1886 commissioned Mathers to fill in the outline of rituals in the Cipher Manuscripts, he let the sorcerer out of the Museum. Through 1887 Mathers had access to the Ciphers and most likely did the revisionist changing of the Sephirotic and Tarot sequences at that time. He regarded himself as already being under the guidance of the Secret Chiefs.(4) Thus he was confident enough to carry out the reassignment of planets to Sephiroth, and the sequence of the Tarots.

Westcott’s retirement, and the deaths of Little, Woodman and Woodford; allowed Mathers to assume complete Headship of the GD and steer it further in the direction of “a society for the practice of the medieval occult sciences,” not just “the study,” as in the Soc. Ros. in Anglia. Mathers did, however, produce good translations of the Kabbalah Unveiled, and the Scholomance, the Greater and Lesser Keys, the Goetia, the Howling, and the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, a text which encompasses achieving Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Those GD members who used these indiscriminately brought trouble upon themselves. Crowley’s audacious attempt at Abramelin Magic lead to his meeting ‘Aiwass,’ a Mid-Eastern Solar-Phallic Spirit of questionable provenance. The Abramelin system was neither presented, nor practiced by the regular Golden Dawn, however.

 Yeats wasn’t interested or overly concerned with the origin of the Order, but found in it methods something practical and workable. He termed it “a system of thought leaving my imagination free to create as it chose and yet make all that it created, or could create, part of one history, and that is the soul’s.”

 What he found was the marvelous synthesis’ of mythology and symbolism which had been developed during the Masonic Rosicrucian period and made possible by the scholarship of Hockley and Mackenzie and Dr Woodman; and the Classical language abilities of Rev A Woodford. These men passed away before the fissuring began or even before the order was well started. Had these men not passed away, and had Westcott not departed, they could have restrained the autocratic mania of Mathers.
In reading 777, Mathers’ systematic presentations of Kabbalistic attributions also known as a Concourse of Forces, I was amazed to find that he presented the assignment of the parts of the body in terms of Astrology. Thus he assigned Aries to the head, etc; rather than the more complete Kabbalistic method presented in the Sepher Yetzirah: “The right side of your head, the Angel Ratziel, the left side Tzaphkiel.” Mathers is ignoring the higher in preference for the lower; the understanding of the Kabbalah in terms of Astrology rather than the reverse. Astrology is limited to the world of Yetzirah; the Kabbalah extends into the worlds of Briah, Creation; and Aziluth, the Absolute, the Archetypes, far beyond Astrology. Higher mysticism is no longer subject to astrology. And now some Golden Dawn offshoots are considering scraping the Kabbalah altogether, and just working with the Olympians, the planetary and sign Deities. This is simply “dumbing down.”

To those who still intuitively feel one should place the Tarot Zero, the Fool, before #1 the Magician I can only say, “Wait a minuet” The Zero has no place-value, and is not a number in the Kabbalah! Thus Aleph signifies 1; but Aleph+Ayin (one+nought) cannot be Ten, but is still just One. This is why another letter, Yod, must be used to signify Ten, and not Aleph+Ayin. How can I explain this? Gimel+Ayin+Ayin is not 300 but still just 3. Thus, 300 must be indicated by some other letter (Shin). Zero cannot function as an indicator of tens or hundreds. How can one Apple, plus a zero, be 10 apples? would be asked. Numbers as functions, not just amounts, is very opaque to Kabbalist and Magian thinking (this includes Manichaeist, Mazdaist, Arabic, Zoroastrian and other Persian systems). Putting a Zero before a One really nails it down as post-Cartesian, as a recent invention. Putting a zero after a 1 does not make 10, in Kabbalah. While the Kabbalistic Tarot should learn and grow with human history, something so basic as to set as nought the numerology of Kabbalah, so that Yod needn’t be used for ten, would be destructive.

The criticism I advance is perhaps disturbing and deeply controversial; inviting of welcomed argument.(5) I anticipate, with regard to modern Deconstructionism, the following qualms:
“What difference does it make for this or that planet to be placed here or there on the Tree of Life; what difference does it make where the Fool is placed? It is all just made up anyway.” My response to this is as follows:
The learned opinion of many Rabbis, based on years of study and practice of the Torah, Talmud, Mishna, Merkabah, and Hekhaloth, can be regarded as weighty and authoritative with regard to the Kabbalah . What I say now is not PC; not democratic. The Kabbalistic meditation and reflection of such a Rabbi is superior to that of an ordinary person. The Rabbis have found what I as a Buddhist regard as the Akinkanya (no-thingness and infinite light dhyana realm, or state).(6) This is Ain, Ain Soph and Ain Soph Aur.

A modern example of the refusal to recognize any kind of superior understanding and wisdom is the demise of a magical magazine.(7) The editor and chosen writers were very reluctant to recognize any difference between such texts as the Sepher Yetzirah and Holy Blood Holy Grail; between Sogyal Rinpoche and Carlos Castenada. This eliminated the possibility for any kind of special higher knowledge. The Magazine published an article which pronounced “the artificiality or unnaturalness of any kind of path of study and meditation, as a mere contrivance.” After some time it departed, last seen in the company of Deconstructionism.

To become so obsessed with equality that no individual improvement is possible is the defeat of the ritual intent of magical empowerment and initiation. Frequently the oft repeated query with regard to what to do about the "let down" feeling after every ritual was informally voiced. At the very least, one had to ascribe to the deconstruction of Hierarchy, in effect to move everyone back to "square one" at the end of every Ritual to avoid being charged as an "elitist". Anyone can be ones own Magical Teacher, to study, to duties and responsibilities with regard to the environment, etc. But to achieve Powers one must have real Initiation from higher intelligence's, realized beings who already possess these powers. The Golden Dawn attempted and failed to provide for these superiors. But they did awaken modern interest in Tarot, Astrology and channeling in the English speaking world and was instrumental in flooding the current New Age market with paperbacks on quabbalah and tarot, some authors looking askance at Mathers and his dictatorial manner yet unwittingly all following his secretarial alignment of the Fool before #1 Magician and the novel(!) movement of Venus from Hod, the feminine over to Netzack, the masculine.

Notes
(1) The alignment of Moon, Mercury and Sun is seen in many alchemical works.
(2) War and Peace, Tolstoy, p328 and the Russian film.
(3) Golden Dawn Scrapabook p29
(4) Sword of Wisdom Ithell Colquhoun p75
(5) mpcollet@chorus.net
(6) However unlike Kabbalah it is not considered the absolute.
(7) I believe the author is refering to Gnosis A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. (Editor)