GoldenDawn

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Tarot and the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in 1888 in England by William Wynn Westcott, William Robert Woodman and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, who were all Freemasons.

A remarkable aspect of this organisation was that it was one of the first to admit men and women as equal. As a result, some of its most influential members were women: Moina Mathers, Florence Farr, Dion Fortune, Annie Horniman and Maud Gonne, the confidante of the poet William Butler Yeats, who was the most famous member of the group.

The Golden Dawn was headed by MacGregor Mathers, who was mainly responsible for its structure and rituals as well as creating a whole system of magic. He spent most of his time researching in the British Library. His fondness for medieval scripts and old magical texts led him to write most of the Golden Dawn’s material, drawing his inspiration from Egyptian, Greek and Jewish magic.

MacGregor Mathers also came across the writings of Eliphas Lévi, a Frenchman, who dedicated most of his work to the Kabbalah. Lévi tried to make connections between Western magic and occult philosophy, researching medieval and renaissance writings, Egyptian images and Hebrew. He believed that the Tarot could only be fully understood with the Kabbalah and vice versa, thus developing a Kabbalistic system, which was fully integrated into the Tarot.

MacGregor Mathers’ legacy is the fusion of all the material he researched into a working coherent system. It is known as the Western Mystery Tradition, which includes Kabbalah, Tarot, Egyptian Mysteries, Enochian Magic, Alchemy and the Four Elements.

The Golden Dawn was not founded to be based on any religious beliefs. Its purpose was to provide spiritual development and enlightenment, searching for the truth and experiencing the magical side of reality rather than just settling for belief. In practice, Golden Dawn magic incorporates ritual, meditation and development of psychic abilities, using the symbols, gods and wisdom of all religions in order to express a single divine energy.

The hierarchical structure was based on the ten degrees of the Sephiroth from the Kabbalah. Members would pass through each of the ten levels by sitting exams and partaking in theatrical rituals, which took place in specially designed temples set up throughout England.

Right from the start, the Golden Dawn shrouded itself in secrecy. Members took an oath not to reveal its teachings, which ultimately may have protected them from persecution. By using the word ‘occult’ (which simply means ‘hidden’), the organisation could have been mistakenly accused of black magic or Devil worship.

The Golden Dawn maintained that by working through its rituals, teachings and travelling the psychic pathways described by the Tarot, it is possible to reach a state of divine enlightenment, even acquire great power. This may have been the main reason to keep the Order a secret, so misuse of its knowledge could be prevented.

At the pinnacle of its existence, the Golden Dawn had some influential people within its ranks, amongst them Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite, who both went on to develop the two most famous Tarot decks of the 20^th Century: the Toth Deck (Crowley with artist Frieda Harris, first published 1969) and the Rider-Waite-Smith (Waite with artist Pamela Coleman-Smith, first published 1909).

By the year 1900, arguments amongst Golden Dawn members led to rifts within the group. MacGregor Mathers was expelled from the Order, when he accused Wynn Wescott of having faked some documents. He left for Paris with his wife Moina in 1892, where he founded a splinter group.

W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet, took over from Mathers, but in 1903 A. E. Waite took control and moved the Order into a Christian direction, renaming it ‘The Holy Order of the Golden Dawn’. But due to dwindling membership and apathy, Waite had to close the Order in 1914. By then, a number of groups had dispersed across Britain, to Paris and even Chicago. Today, many occult groups claim to have originated from the Golden Dawn, and its teachings are still researched and practised today.