Israel Regardie - The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic.pdf

THE COMPLETE GOLDEN DAWN SYSTEM OF MAGIC
philosophy. First and foremost perhaps is Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah, a
beautiful elaboration of the fundamental concepts of the Order. Criticized by the
contentious Ellic Howe, it is nonetheless one of the best modern introductions to a difficult
subject. Its only flaws might be that she has given too much space to a discussion of the
Unknowable in violation of Sir Edwin Arnold's warning (in The Light of Asia): "Sink not the
string of thoughts into the Unfathomable. Who asks doth err. Who answers errs. Say
naught." And then it is marred somewhat by the neo-Theosophical viewpoints of the
Besant-Leadbeater clique relative to the Master Jesus, which has no connection at all with
the Qabalah, and is even repudiated by her more modern successors such as Gareth Knight.
Nonetheless it is strongly recommended.
In the same category, I would place The Ladder of Lights by William Gray. It is a superb
piece of Qabalistic writing that I am sure will find its own place in posterity. A number of
others might be mentioned, but these should provide a starting point for the enterprising
student who wishes to get a good handle on an otherwise obscure subject.
In order to integrate, in part, some of the mass of disconnected materials given in
the Knowledge Lectures, I have decided to include long quotations from MacGregor
Mathers' Introduction to The Kaballah Unveiled. I will not say much about the latter book save
that it is frightfully obscure, but the Introduction is first rate. The Kaballah Unveiled is an
English translation from the Latin of Knorr von Rosenroth, a Renaissance scholar who
translated portions of the Zohar from Hebrew into Latin. The Zohar has in recent years been
translated wholly into English by Simon and Sperling (Soncino Press), from which the
student may get some idea of what its contents are like. There is an even earlier
translation of the first part of the Zohar by a William Williams who wrote under the
pseudonym of Nurho de Manhar (Wizard Bookshelf, San Diego, 1978), evidently part of
his magical motto while in the Second Order of the R.R. et A.C. It is pre-eminently
readable, and was originally published in installments in the early part of this century in a
magazine published by the American Section of the Theosophical Society. Parts of this will
also be quoted from time to time.
While on this topic, I feel impelled to deal with some criticisms made by hostile
authors. Some of these people claim that Mathers' contributions to the Knowledge Lectures
and the whole corpus of Golden Dawn teaching was based entirely on his research at the
British Museum. In other words there was nothing new about the Golden Dawn teaching.
In one sense this is true. In a more profound sense it is wholly false. For example,
the Pentagram Ritual. Eliphas Levi does indeed refer to it as the conjuration of the Four. In
an old Hebrew prayer given in a Sephardic prayer book, there is a reference to the four
Archangels and the quarters in which they reside. But nowhere that I am aware of is there a
description of the Pentagram itself, the elemental attributions to its several points, the
divine names that accompany them, and any descriptions of the technique or method of
describing this Pentagram. Much the same is true of the Hexagram ritual for the invocation or
banishing of the planets and Sephiroth of the Tree of Life.
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