The Key To The Golden Dawn
System of Magic

by Nick Farrell

Introduction

The Golden Dawn is a magical training school.  It has been responsible for the training of some of the greatest magical minds of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.  You are given much in the way of intellectual information and a complete symbolic set of ideas to play with.  However, a key component of the original school and the groups that followed it, is missing from the modern order.  It is the key that brings all these symbols to life and makes all the strange meanderings of the GD system become spiritual reality.  You might have noticed that, throughout the course work, the regular use of meditation is assumed, although there are few subjects given for meditation and there is not a course of instruction on how to do it.

This is because most of the GD students came from other schools of thought, where meditation was considered part of normal work.  In fact, it was considered that someone who had not had any training from somewhere else would be a little suspect.  If you look at what we call ‘channelling’ from T.H. Pattinson (Horus Temple) in the "The Golden Dawn Scrapbook" by R.A. Gilbert, p. 37-38, you can see that what he considered the contacts of the Order frowned upon people who had not some experience joining the order.

"I wish to speak to you of the G.D.  The prime mover of it must exercise the keenest possible care and must not accept people into its secrets who are not Occult Students, they all ought to have some occult development which has been the outcome of their own research; otherwise much Evil Magic will be the result.  Much good can come out of it if rightly directed, but *one* Evil One can upset the harmony of the whole, so that its efforts would be neutral for a lengthy period.  The idea in view must be not to establish an Order, but to gather together those men who are an Order in themselves.  You must take every care not to initiate any who have no occult tendency in a degree developed.."

Archangel Raphael
Whether you think that this message came from Raphael or not does not really matter, it does indicate that GD students were expected to have some smarts from outside and this would have included training in meditation techniques.  With the exception of modern masonry, meditation is a vital part of any magical training and is a feature of all those who followed the GD path.
Now, I am not talking about the sort of meditation that brings about intellectual information either, although the techniques we will be looking at will help you with your studies.  Instead I am looking at the sort of meditation which uses the symbols you have been given and experiences them as energy.  The techniques that we will be using are the same, or similar, to those given at Whare Ra.  None of these are inner order ideas but, once mastered, will help you work with symbols that will become even more vital in the inner order.
In the Golden Dawn it takes a long time to get anywhere.  If we wanted, we could probably rush you all through all the outer grade work in a month.  What we do, however, is let the grade work and the various initiations work their alchemy upon you.  This takes time and is highly successful.  However there is a danger that people might think that the understanding of intellectual information is all you need to ascend the grades, in which case the GD ceases to be a magical order and becomes just an adjunct of masonry, where all you need to do is the ritual and learn a bit of intellectual material.

However the GD is a spiritual path, in which intellectual knowledge forms a trellis on which the rose of spiritual awakening can grow.  But to do this effectively we have to use the symbols we are given and turn them, with the magic of our unconscious mind, into living powers.

Each temple in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn develops its own flavour.  These were all features of the GD and the SM too.  Whare Ra, with whose members I worked, used to drill in the intellectual stuff and then train people so that they became a spiritual expression of it.  Daily meditation was considered vital and there were special rooms set aside in the Whare Ra building for that purpose.  Each ritual was meditated on, not only to find spiritual information, but also as part of the spiritual quest.  This made the Whare Ra people extremely disciplined and balanced, one of the prerequisites for occult work.

The same applies to the Inner Light schools which developed from Dion Fortune's work.  While the intellectual content of these schools was light weight, they more than made up for it with the inner work that they did, with limited intellectual knowledge and ritual work.  If GD people were to develop this level of spiritual discipline, then the spiritual alchemy in the outer order would be more dramatic.

Cabbalah
To many of us who came from other systems, cabbalistic techniques are almost second nature.  What is strange then, is that for a magical order that is incomprehensible without this knowledge, the GD apparently does not teach it directly.  I say apparently because we are given the cabbalistic keys but they appear in the knowledge papers to be memorised without any explanation.  However, if we use meditation techniques to approach these letters, words and names of power, we can make the information in each knowledge paper fall off the page and become something powerful.

Practical Uses
This extra-curricular work is designed initially to make the work you do on the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram more spiritually meaningful and therefore more powerful.  After we have done this, we will be looking at techniques to start helping you with the grade work to make this more meaningful and to enhance the effect of your initiation.


First stage

Diary
Each diary page should contain the following information:

Date: Time:
Dreams from the night before (if remembered)
Meditation or Pathworking subject:
A sentence on what happened.

Daily Routine
Although the time you select to do this work is up to you, we recommend that you have a regular time.  Besides this being a good discipline, it helps the inner forces behind this work to align themselves to your work.  The first thing in the morning, when the mind is freshest and the lessons of sleep are still close to the conscious mind, is the best time.  Each session should not last more than 40 minutes and your diary notes written immediately afterwards before important realisations are forgotten.

Good results with this work are obtained by daily commutative work.  A meditation session should be completed six times a week.  Obviously, we expect that will not be possible all the time and that sometimes the quality of a session will not always be great due to stress.  However, it is a sign of your will power's ability to conquer your lower self.  Each session you will perform the Cabalistic Cross, the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, then the meditation work.  Then you end with a Cabalistic Cross.

You should have a clock in front of you so that you can measure time.  Ideally you should do one session in the morning and the other in the evening.  However I accept that this is not possible for most people, so I suggest you work in a second session wherever you can.  One thing I have noticed is that although it is hard to get the routine at first, after a while it gets a bit addictive.


Meditation and Relaxation
The posture for the meditation is the same as those of the God of Egypt.  Sitting poised on a straight-backed chair; the chin should be slightly inclined towards the chest so that the neck is straight.  Thighs should be horizontal, legs vertical and your feet in line with the hips and firmly planted on the floor.  The hands should be resting on your thighs.  Your elbows should be slightly away from the side of your body (which is why arm rests on a chair a good thing).  This posture allows the forces contacted in the meditation to flow freely.  The ability to relax at will is crucial for any occult work.  When seated in the meditation position, focus on the feet, tense the muscles for about three seconds and then allow them to relax.  Focus on the calves of the legs: tense and then relax them.  Continue this process throughout the entire body.  Don't forget the facial muscles!

Breathing Exercise
Altered breathing patterns build up subtle changes within the bloodstream and enhance meditation and ritual work.  You have to breathe from your diaphragm, which is situated below the rib cage in the abdomen.  It is unnecessary to pull in the breath or force anything, just push out the diaphragm, the rib cage will expand and air will rush into your lungs.  Contracting the lungs will push out the old air -- you should not hear any sound or your are forcing the process too much, the solution is to slow down.

The breath cycle is: empty your lungs and then inhale deeply to a count of four.  Retain the tightened diaphragm for a count of two; exhale completely for a count of four; retain the tightened diaphragm for a count of two; then inhale to a count of four.  The counting should be your own and matched to your own lung capacity.  Once you are completely relaxed, this breath cycle should be established consciously for five minutes.  Then it may be dismissed and you may move on to the next stage of meditation.

Mantra
I am a great fan of mantra as a way of getting into a deep trance and sending you to the point you want to go.  Mantra is vibration of the divine name while keeping your mind focused on the symbol.  You will get other related thoughts going into your mind but you must always return to the symbol that you are meditating upon.  The mantra will be the divine name or the Hebrew letter.  You should vibrate this for 30 minutes.  Each vibration should be the same as the last, you should not allow yourself to speed up, or slow down.  You should take a deep breath and visualise the energy you are chanting being drawn to your heart centre instead of breathing out.  Vibrate the name for as long as you can.

You should be aware that, as you vibrate, you are calling the divine aspects of that energy into your physical and psychological make-up.  As you do the mantra, allow thoughts that are connected to the symbol to appear in your mind but do not allow these to side track you.  If you feel you are drifting off the topic then return to the original symbol.  Keep an eye on the time, open your eyes everytime you think you have been doing the chant for 10 minutes.  You will be surprised how the time will fly, particularly with practice.
After 15-20 minutes you will start to notice an energy.  Note what it feels like.  This is the energy of the symbol.  With it will not come bursts of power but information.  The information will be useful but do not allow yourself to become too carried away.  You are trying to experience the energy and the emotion behind the symbol.  You might find you get strange random symbols, like hypnogogic or dream images.  Note these, but do not follow them at this time, you can think about all that afterwards.

Deep Trance
After you have finished you should feel relaxed and in a deep trance but that trance will be flavoured by the symbol you are meditating upon and its energy.  It is like you have fired all the rockets and are cruising through space on your own momentum.  You should, however, always keep your mind focused on the target symbol.  If you drift away from it, you should visualise the symbol and keep going.  You should do this for ten minutes.

The Temple of the Heart
This visualisation should be completed at least once a week, at any point of the day. It does not have to be done during your meditation session and can be done as a break from your regular work.
Perform a cabalistic cross.  Visualise yourself inside the golden sphere at your heart.  Before you is a great red rose.  A beam of light comes from above your head, down your spine to connect to the rose (similar to the middle pillar exercise) and the rose slowly opens.  You walk into the rose and there in its centre is a black cubic altar.  On the altar in a small golden cup is a single flame.  The flame is your divine spark, the real you which has built countless personalities through many incarnations.  The flame is infinite yet small and still.  Commune with it.  Feel it.  Desire knowledge of it.  When you are finished, step back from the rose and see it close.  Expand your consciousness to encompass the whole of your body.  Feel the rose and flame in your heart.  Perform another Cabalistic Cross.

The First Subject
The first thing you need to do is take an A4 size black card and white paper.  Draw a large Hebrew letter Aleph on white paper and cut it out.  Stick it onto the black paper using as little glue as possible.  Before your meditation session, you should read up all you know about the Hebrew letter.  While you are doing the breathing part of your meditation, you should stare at the card (which you should put in your lap).  You should stare at it as hard as possible so that when you look at a blank wall (or shut your eyes) you should see a black Hebrew letter on a white square.  You should then chant the name Aleph.  This process should be repeated for all the Hebrew letters other than the final forms.  This might seem odd to you, because we are saying that the Hebrew letters are divine names.  However in Cabbalah this is true.

Each Session
For each session take one Hebrew letter.  If you do two sessions a day, use different letters.  This should take you through for the rest of the month.

What Will be the Result?
If you think that every time you draw or chant a Hebrew letter, or vibrate a divine name, you are accessing the powers and energies you feel during these meditation sessions, your magic will be more intense and personal.  By calling these powers to you, you will be understanding the role of the Hebrew alphabet in the Golden Dawn System of magic.  By seeing them as energy keys, you will start to give them magical power within your own unconscious.  If you have a clear idea about what magical notes you are playing, you will understand the song better.  These Hebrew letters, which are a trial to learn and memorise, will become as important to you as any magical weapons you may build.  Putting them onto the black card will make it easier to visualise when next month we start to do the whole thing with the divine names of God and the Archangels in the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.