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

THE COMPLETE GOLDEN DAWN SYSTEM OF MAGIC
My next step was to telephone Askin Publishers in London to confess my
total disappointment and stating that if they insisted on publishing Laycock's
Introduction with my Dictionary, I would withdraw the latter. So it came to pass
that Askin Publishers returned my Dictionary at my request. Sometime in the next
immediate period they must have formulated a Dictionary which they published
with the Laycock Introduction.
These facts need to be mentioned solely to establish the priority of my
Dictionary. Not that that matters very much. There was a need for this Dictionary
amongst students of Magic, and someone got there first.
The history of the Enochian Dictionary that is being published here should
not be without interest.
Shortly after having benn elevated to the Adeptus Minor Grade, I began an
intensive study of the Enochian system, including the beginning of a Dictionary.
The study of the system resulted in my writing a paper entitled An Addendum to
the Book of the Concourse of Forces, included in this volume. Within a couple of
years, the Dictionary had achieved a well-defined form -- that is by 1940-41. Then
World War II intervened, when it was put aside with a number of other similar
projects until the 1950's. During that time, the Dictionary was loaned to a number
of different people on both sides of the Atlantic. Ordinarily I would not use names,
but in this instance I feel it is incumbent upon me to do so.
There was a young man in Surrey, a protege of an osteopathic friend of
mine A.E. Charles, to whom I lent it early in the 1950's -- altogether apart from a
handful of students here in the U.S. Somewhere around 1956, 1 was visited in Los
Angeles by Miss Tamara Bourkoun, a very ardent and knowledgeable student of
Co-Masonry and the occult. Amongst other things, including the Golden Dawn
Tarot Deck, I loaned her the Enochian Dictionary with my permission to copy it
for her use if she so willed. From then on, it had some kind of circulation here and
there among the more serious students of Magic who took the Enochian system
seriously.
Early in the 1970's Sangreal Foundation, who had already published
several of my things, were toying with the idea of seeing that the Enochian
Dictionary was finally published. However again some unforeseen events
occurred which precluded the possibility of that happening.
Now under the direction of the Israel Regardie Foundation and Falcon Press,
this long awaited work has found itself in print, in this particular volume.
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