Astral projection, ritual magic, and alchemy : Golden Dawn material by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and others ; edited and introduced by Francis King ; additional material by R.A. Gilbert

290 Pages·1987·82.96 MB·English

by  Francis King

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Additional Material by R. A. Gilbert
DESTINY BOOKS
Rochester, Vermont
Destiny Books
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
U.K. edition published by Aquarian Press
Denington Estate, Wellingborough
Northamptonshire, NN8 2RQ England
Copyright © 1987 Francis King
Cover illustration: 'The Star', from the unpublished
MacGregor Mathers deck designed by Miranda Payne
on the basis of pre-l900 Golden Dawn forms.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Inquiries should be addressed to Destiny Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mathers, S. L. MacGregor (Samuel Liddell MacGregor),
1854-1918.
Astral projection, ritual magic, and alchemy.
Originally published: London: Spearman, 1971.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 2. Magic.
3. Astral projection. 4. Rosicrucians. 5. Occult
sciences. I. King, Francis. II. Gilbert, R. A.
III. Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. IV. Title.
BF161l.M378 1987 133.4'3 87-1768
ISBN 0-89281-164-1 (pbk.)
10987654321
Destiny Books is a division of
Inner Traditions International, Ltd.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Distributed to the book trade in the United States
by Harper and Row
To the memories of Gerald Yorke and
Francis Israel Regardie

CONTENTS
Foreword New Golden Dawn Discoveries 9
Introduction
I. The Survival of Magic 21
II. The Revival of Magic 28
III. The Golden Dawn 33
IV. The Magic of the Golden Dawn 37
PART ONE Imagination and Will-Power 45
Flying Roll V 47
Flying Roll I 53
Flying Roll II 57
Flying Roll VI 61
PART TWO Astral Projection 63
Prefatory Note 65
Flying Roll IV 71
Flying Roll XI 75
Flying Roll XXV 85
Flying Roll XXX 91
Flying Roll XXXVI 93
Flying Roll XXXIII 95
PART THREE Rosicrucian Adeptship 103
Flying Roll XVI 105
Flying Roll XVIII 111
Flying Roll XIX 115
PART FOUR Man, God and the Rosicrucian Initiation 123
Flying Roll XV 125
Flying Roll X 131
7
CONTENTS
PART AVE Esoteric Psychology 141
Prefatory Note 143
Hying Roll XX 145
Hying Roll XXI 151
PART SIX Hermetic Love and the Higher Magic 161
Hying Roll XIII 163
Hying Roll XXVII 167
PART SEVEN Alchemy 175
Prefatory Note 177
Hying Roll VII 179
PART EIGHT Christian Occultism 193
Prefatory Note 195
Paper I 197
Paper II 199
Post Mortem Conditions 201
The Devotion of the Quipus 204
The Eagle 217
Teachings on the Church 228
PART NINE Hermetic Wisdom and Mystical Prayer 235
The Three Grades of Prayer 237
Various Teachings 239
On Divine Names 243
Four States of Prayer 247
APPENDIX A An Exegetical Note Upon the Hying Rolls 257
APPENDIX B Enochian Magic and the Enochian Language 261
APPENDIX C A Stella Matutina Hying Roll 265
APPENDIX D The Fugitive Hying Rolls R. A. Gilbert 269
APPENDIX E 'Catalogue of Hying Rolls' R. A. Gilbert 286
8
FOREWORD
New Golden Dawn Discoveries
In view of the current widespread interest in both the history of the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the magical system which
was the basis of all the occult activities of its members, who included
W B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and Dion Fortune, it is surprising that
today, in 1987, important Order-instructional documents dating from
before 1900 should be published for the first time.
Yet, as readers of Appendix D of this book will discover for themselves,
such is the case, and it would seem probable that all the Golden Dawn
instructional documents, on which the Order's magical workings were
based, are now available in printed form.
Only fifty years ago the position was very different, and the only
people to have even heard of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
save for initiates of one or two obscure secret societies derived from
it, were those comparatively few people who had read the
Autobiographies of W B. Yeats, and a handful of dedicated students
of the writings of Aleister Crowley.
Somewhere around the middle of the 1930s the situation began to
change. The fiction and non-fiction books and articles ofDion Fortune
made available to the occult public a somewhat popularized version
of some aspects of the Order's teachings: Israel Regardie's Tree of Life
presented the Golden Dawn techniques of ritual magic in a readable
and fairly easily comprehended manner; and, eventually, many of the
Order's rituals and instructional documents were printed in The Golden
Dawn (4 vols., Aries Press, Chicago, 1937-40).
Since then much more has been published and, as a result of all
this, most western occultists of the present day are well aware of the
general nature of the Golden Dawn system-although few of them
have worked that system in its entirety. An awareness of the one-time
existence of the Golden Dawn as a working magical order now extends
well beyond the ranks of those who could consider themselves to be
'working occultists' or even serious students of the occult; most people
9