Beyond the Sun released

Beyond the Sun – the secret teachings of the Missing Golden Dawn Order  (click to order)

“This book contains the Secret Inner Order Teachings of the missing order of the Golden Dawn – Whare Ra. Whare Ra managed to keep secret and above all keep running long after the other Golden Dawn magical orders had given up the ghost. Closing in the late 1970s the Order was founded by Dr Robert Felkin nearly 100 years ago. Working in New Zealand, Whare Ra became a secret forefront of occult teaching.

Nick Farrell publishes the Second Order Rituals of this Order including the 6=5 and 7=4 in their complete and unedited state as well as the 6=5 training papers and lectures. He also examines the history of Whare Ra and provides commentaries to the rituals.

Contained in this book are the 6=5 experiences of the poet WB Yeats and other adepts who went through the various initiations. It also contains magical exercises inspired by the Whare Ra material

This book is limited to 100 copies and was published on the anniversary of Robert Felkin’s death.

 

This limited first edition is selling out faster than I expected which is good.  Thanks everyone.

THIS HAS NOW SOLD OUT 

THANKS EVERYONE

Golden Dawn astral initiation rituals do not work magically

I am famous for being blunt and the headline statement will get a few people upset. I have said over a number of years that I do not believe that astral initiation into the Golden Dawn  work, but have not said why.

I would LOVE astral initiation to work. As the head of an order, it would mean that I could set up temples in the US or other far-flung parts of the world at a great rate. If I was charging fees for this, I could make a bomb. It would enable groups to be established without me having to bring people to Rome for training. In short, astral initiation is a tool for empire building rather than creating magicians. If MOAA used astral initiations there would be a huge temptation to empire build.

None of the people I had ever met who said they had been astrally initiated into the Golden Dawn had any experience which indicated that anything useful happened. Those who claimed mystical experiences had none of the signs in their sphere of sensation, nor did their experiences show that an astral initiation had taken place.   For example one person said that during their astral initiation, they had seen a pyramid and that was proof they had been initiated into the Golden Dawn.  However, a Pyramid is not a symbol in the 0=0 and it is not proprietary to the GD.  Others have just said new Age sorts of answers like “I felt a white light” or “I was surrounded by love.”  I get that when I eat chocolate, it does not mean that Lynd hazelnut is a self-initiation into the Golden Dawn.  If someone told me, “I felt scared shitless, I could not speak, I felt like throwing up and then I felt Horus was banging a sort on the back of my neck” I would thing you had something close to what a 0=0 is like.

Astral initiation is possible and takes place at a senior level of magic all the time. However, it does not take place at an outer order level. Firstly, because to be astrally initiated you have to be able to get up onto the astral levels, which a beginner cannot do. Secondly, it needs an initiating temple to perform a ritual on the astral plane at a correct time and to perform the entire ritual without scripts or direction.  For this reason, astral initiation is traditionally carried out by a high-level contact to a student and is not something which works in a structured group environment.

So let us look at two rituals which are being used for astral initiation. The first is supposed to involve using the Golden Dawn Z documents and sees the candidate as a talisman. 

The candidate’s name is placed on a list of those who want to be initiated, sometimes a photograph is used, or an astrology chart. This list is placed in a black bag and “initiated” as if it were a talisman. The logic is that since a talisman can be charged, then a human can be too by proxy.

Intellectually this technique could technically work. The talisman version of the Zdocs creates a thought form which is initiated with force. The thought form would then slowly transform the candidate’s sphere of sensation until it reached a standard comparable to initiation.

Practically however the Z docs do not allow a talisman to be adjusted to a candidate - it was written assuming that you were fusing a spirit to an inanimate object. If you look at the wording of the Z2 document, it is different for a talisman with good reason. You are looking to tie the spirit of a talisman to a physical object and not the complex operation of breaking down the sphere of sensation which the 0=0 is supposed to be doing. Most of the talisman ritual is focused on the talisman and the astral form of the force you are trying to attract to it. A list of names or symbol of a candidate will become charged (as a talisman) but the person will not. The best-case scenario is that your talismanic list will draw the correct experiences to a candidate over time. This is unlikely, particularly as it breaks the rule of having a talisman focusing only on one or two outcomes. Your poor talisman thought-form could be trying to reach two to ten different people at the same time and bring them an experience which is supposed to be life changing.

So what about plan b? This method involves initiating an astral form of a person using something connected to them. You create a simulacrum of a person and then perform the 0=0 ritual on that. Afterwards, you send the simulacrum to the person and fuse it to their sphere of sensation.

This requires you first to build a particularly dense astral body and then build the thought forms for the Golden Dawn ritual as normal. You could not do that for a list of people. It would have to be a two-part ritual which involved a rite to build a strong enough astral body. This thought-form would have to be built from the energy of the officers and would be quite draining. They would then have to carry out the initiation proper.

It would take a great deal of experimentation to see if this worked and there would be some problems.

The 0=0 requires the purification and consecration of the candidate. In this situation, you would be purifying and consecrating the thought form. There is nothing to make the thought form do the same thing to the candidate’s sphere of sensation. Even if there was, it is difficult to see how a thought form would manage it.

Then there is the oath which has to be administered to the candidate and tested and sealed into their sphere of sensation. In this situation, the oath is being said by a thought form and NOT by the candidate. The thought form will be bound by the oath and tested by the 42 assessors and not the candidate. Then there is the splitting of the sphere of sensation to the four sons of Horus, something that I consider an important part of the 0=0. What would be split here is the thought form’s “astral form” and not that of the candidate. This means that not all the problems of leaky spheres of sensation which plague most candidates would be fixed.

On the plus side, a thought-form could perhaps bring an awareness of the Higher Self and perhaps make some changes to the sphere of sensation but this would be nothing like the experience of a physical initiation.

I mentioned that astral initiation does exist and I can say that there have been a couple of situations where it happened to me.  Neither case involved a ritual at all, all where while the initiator, and myself were in an astral state. I was wasted for some weeks afterwards. It gave me no status in any order other than in my own personal development.

In the MOAA correspondence course, we use a form of astral self-initiation but it takes more than a year’s worth of preparation before the 0=0 grade initiation takes place. It connects the candidate to the forces behind the Golden Dawn and their Higher Self. However, it does not involve any ritual on our part at all, nor does it count as a 0=0 in MOAA. It has an effect (although it is not as good as a 0=0) because the candidate is forcing the connections and the contacts are doing all the ritual work. In the astral work, the candidate sees what happens to them and interacts with it. I think it is the closest you can come to an astral initiation, but it takes a long time to build up to that point.  One thing I find interesting about this particular method of astral initiation is that the people we have put through it soon found a source for a physical initiation.

There are some other problems with Astral Initiation. Given that most candidates either do not feel anything (or are not trained enough to feel anything) it requires a lot of trust that the group is kosher. Ten years ago I wrote how a group was making a fortune by doing mass astral initiations.  A friend who lived around the corner from the group’s house applied for a fake astral initiation. He was told that the ritual would take place at a certain time and he would have to tune into it. Instead, at the time he went around to the house where the group met. He was invited in and found the entire group drinking beer and watching Gerry Springer. In other words, they were collecting the cash and doing nothing. Not only is astral initiation good for empire building, it can be a good source of income for the unscrupulous.

Watching Dr Who will connect you to the GD better than astral initiation.

One of the excuses made for astral initiation is that it gives people a chance to experience something if you cannot get to a physical temple. However, if the thing does not work then what is the point?A candidate would be better off meditating on their own than carrying out a bogus astral initiation. In fact, I would say it would be more challenging and fulfilling for a candidate to watch a good episode of Dr Who than to pay cash for an astral initiation and have nothing happen.

Within the Golden Dawn or Stella Matutina there was no practice of astral initiation. It was used in the AO as a Mathers money making exercise to squeeze cash out of rich Americans (and it is not clear what, if any, ritual or astral work was done for this). It had the bonus that allowed them to establish US temples, but there is no indication that they worked. 

The reversed pentagram; the key to the liberation of matter

The  Golden Dawn Temple Deck  by Harry Wendrich

The modern Golden Dawn has a bit of a problem with using the reversed pentagram due to some very mixed messages about its use by its founder Samuel Mathers.

Mathers firstly tells students that it is an evil symbol and you should not use it, however later on he tells you that it has a use for controlling evil spirits. It is possible that Mathers changed his mind, but it is equally possible that he expected people to work out what the reversed pentagram actually meant.

In Mather’s Last Secret I printed the only version seen of the original GD portal ritual. In it Mathers describes the Devil card which shows the Devil with an upright pentagram above his head and a face which is shaped like an inverted one.

“Thus he represents the gross and materialized Elemental Forces of Nature, and the whole would be an evil symbol, were it not for the pentagram of light above his head which guides and regulates his movements. He is the eternal renewer of all the changing forces of creation in conformity with the laws of the All Powerful One, Blessed be He, which controlling laws are typified by the Pentagram of Light surmounting the whole.”

In other words, the reversed pentagram represents lowest elemental force, but it is redeemed by the message of the upright pentagram.

How not to do it... very naughty Mr Case

The upright pentagram means that spirit rules the elemental nature, however the reversed pentagram appears to show that spirit is under the control of the elements. However, in fact the pentagram means a little more than that. It actually shows that spirit is latent within all matter. Moreover, if you use a reversed pentagram to banish or invoke you end up revealing that latent spiritual force.

The reversed pentagram is about finding the divine in everything around you. This is a mystery and a heresy to those who find matter evil and something which needs to be escaped. This might be the reason why it does not get a mention or developed in much of the GD paperwork.

The formula of the Devil card hints that it is possible to do a supreme inverted pentagram ritual which is intended to liberate and use the divine force which is around you.  If you look at the card it would suggest you would do a normal upright active or passive pentagram and then an inverted pentagram of the element.  You are, using Mathers’ words working with the “eternal renewer of all the changing forces of creation in conformity with the laws of the All Powerful One.”

A lesser ritual of the pentagram ritual has nothing to do with the elements and Mathers suggests that were you to draw an inverted pentagram you would be drawing symbol of the “gross and materialised Elemental Forces of Nature.” What I think he is suggesting is that spirit is latent in everything but slumbers. You cannot draw it out naturally but need the extra energy of a spirit pentagram to awaken it.

Mathers suggests using this reversed pentagram when you are dealing with evil spirits so that you do not harm them. This too is probably a blind. When you open the quarters using any supreme pentagrams you are working with the elementals through the power of spirit. Inverted pentagrams take you much lower into matter. This is a point often represented by the depths of the underworld. It is hard for us to get to that point naturally because it is bound up with our own rational fears. We are trying to conceive of a point where matter slows down to the point where it triggers unconscious fears of demonic forces, death, plague and extinction.

The reversed pentagram acts as a diver’s weight drawing us down, but before we can do so we need to be sure that we can handle that pressure.

It takes a balanced soul not to journey to that level and not project their own devils into the dark, but rather see the divine manifesting there.  It takes an adept to see those forces as Gods working slowly at those levels.

It is probably for this reason that Mathers warned his students off, while at the same time gave hints of what they needed to do.  

The Golden Dawn is not a bunch of Nazis

There is a move afoot within the Golden Dawn community to liberate the name Golden Dawn from a deluded bunch of Greek Nazis who, in the popular mind, have taken it over.

In actual fact this confusion has come from the fact that the Western Press have translated the name of the Nazi political party Chrysi Avgi.   The reason is probably that Fox broadcasters can’t pronounce Greek. 

The group, which is xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic has a few things going for it.  It moves into deprived towns in Greece and offers food and community services to Greek nationals who otherwise would starve.  This is the same tactic used by the Muslim Brotherhood.  When Greek’s economy picks up, the group will fade away, fortunately its leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos  is about as charismatic as a road accident.

However the group has been linked to what the Greek Orthodox Church calls a “rise in paganism” Seraphim, the bishop of Piraeus, spoke publicly of the paganistic dimension of the Greek Golden Dawn.

This would be news to Chrysi Avgi as it is very proud of its Greek Orthodox links, something the church should be ashamed of.

But the danger is that the view might be accepted by the Western Press and the Nazi Golden Dawn might forever be linked to that of the magical one.

Already a Google search for the name Golden Dawn is more likely to result in political finds rather than occult ones. It is only a matter of time before right-wing nutjobs start applying to orthodox golden dawn groups looking for a spiritual dimension for their backward politics.

Irish Blueshirts supported by Yeats

It is not as if the Golden Dawn does not have a few neo-nazi skeletons in its closet.  n the 1930s Yeats lent his support to the openly fascist Irish Blueshirt movement, led by Eoin O'Duffy, a former IRA Chief of Staff who had become Police Chief of the Irish Free State. The Blueshirts aped Mussolini's Blackshirts and Hitler's Brownshirts, down to the same uniforms, the same stiff-armed salute and the same greeting: 'Hail O'Duffy!' Yeats wrote three marching songs for the movement which sent a 700-strong contingent to fight for Franco's Fascist uprising against the Spanish republic in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

The much-admired Maud Gonne was a big fan of Hitler and the Nazis, and her daughter Iseult even hid a German parachutist in her home during the second world war.

As I revealed in my book King over the Water, Samuel Mathers’ closest friends included members of the French Synarch movement and it was likely that the “politics” he was involved with was of that movement. The Synarchs came close to power under the Vichy government in Paris.  I personally think that it was these Right Wing links which caused the end of the first Golden Dawn.  Yeats had left the Golden Dawn by that point in his career.

The far-right is attracted to the perceived elitism of occultism as well as the secrecy and dressing up.  Because of their conservatism, masonic groups often have to watch out for Neo-nazis trying to use them as recruiting grounds. 

Mussolini’s favourite occultist, Julius Evola

Normally such types quote Plato’s Republic as occult justification for their politics. Plato called for a government run by an elite team of philosophers who did not work for money but ran the country on philosophical principles. As I wrote here Mussolini’s favourite occultist, Julius Evola took this idea a stage further.  One of the things I find alarming about this period in occult history is Evola is being dusted off and being presented as an occult genius.  It is something I put down the Right seizing an economic opportunity to peddle its nazi manifesto to the esoteric world again.

But lets be clear about this.

The ideas of the Far Right (and left for that matter) are alien to occultism, mysticism and magic. If you find any of these ideas attractive, you cannot be a viable member of the Golden Dawn.  You might learn a few techniques, but you are forever locked out from discovering the real secrets.

 Why is this?

The Central doctrine behind real occultism is that the universe is an expression of the One Thing.  Therefore none of the beliefs of the Far Right tally with that.

The Golden Dawn system of magic is never about extremes, it is always to do with balance.  The extreme politics of the Far Right and Left are Qlippothic within Golden Dawn philosophy.

 One race cannot be superior to another, one religion cannot be better than another, each human has its function within creation.  You cannot use violence against another person because they reflect an aspect of the Divine and you are doing it to yourself.   Nor can you blame them for your problems.  If immigrants really are taking jobs, a more human approach is to make sure that their country of origin is a better place to live.  People rarely leave their country for the fun of it.  If your country is fucked, then do something about it don't blame your local Jew or African.

Therefore I am joining Don Kraig in his call for Golden Dawnleaders to denounce the Neo-Nazi movement in Europe and call on the press to stop making links between Chrysi Avgi and the Golden Dawn.

Samuel Mathers and Wargaming in the Golden Dawn

Samuel Mathers 

One little known aspect of Samuel Mathers’ life was his love of what these days is called wargaming.   Wargaming is like chess, only it involves the accurate depiction of a battle using toy soldiers on a realistic looking miniature battlefield.
For those who are not familiar with it, it is nuts.  It looks like grown men playing with toy soldiers.  It is like when you were a kid where you had plastic Airfix models that you rolled marbles at.  It is the sort of thing that you grow out of.  In fact it is a lot more complex than that and having played wargaming for a large chunk of my life it is somewhat addictive. Most wargamers know they are a little nuts but they really enjoy the hobby so adopt a “sod you all” approach.   They tend to specialise in historical periods.  I was only interested in the Ancient to Medieval Period and at one point of my life was quite good at it.
Firstly you have to research your military history extremely well.  Not only do your toy soldiers have to be painted realistically, they have to be arranged and fight as historically as possible.  This research not only takes ages, but painting a single figure can take a long time too.  Then there are the rules.  For a wargame to work it requires a set of rules which accurately re-create how a battle is fought.  Mostly this involves scaled down movement, but it also requires a random element that decides if a unit becomes a casualty or runs away.  This enables the table top general to concentrate on the tactical picture.

A modern Ancients wargame

The Prussian Army had seen the merits of wargaming, or Kriegsspiel,  since 1812  and used it for training officers in the Prussian army. It was originally produced and developed further by Lieutenant Georg Leopold von Reiswitz and his son Georg Heinrich Rudolf von Reiswitz of the Prussian Army.  But the rules were somewhat primitive and very structured.  It was a bit more freeform than chess, but not by much,
In fact it was not really until the 1960s when modern wargaming started to look a lot closer at the rules that they became more realistic, or so a lot of modern wargamers thought.  Mathers was ahead of his time.  He had developed a set of elaborate rules which if they were known about could probably have assisted  the war effort during WW1.  In fact Golden Dawn people reported back to Westcott that Mathers was recreating many of the battlefields in his living room.  With his more freeform rules he might have been able to predict the outcomes of some of the more stupid WW1 battles.
According to Achtung Schweinehund! : A Boy's own story of Imaginary combat. By Harry Pearson, published by Little Brown, 2007.
Mathers was one of the greatest collectors of toy soldiers in Paris.    According to the French author and figure collector Marcel Baldet,  Samuel MacGregor Mathers had more than 25,000 figures and fought battles with them to rules of his own devising.
The soldiers he collected were 30mm tin flats, rather than the more popular 3d 15mm or 25 mm figures used today. 25,000 of those sorts of figures, during that period of time would be hugely expensive, but collecting is somewhat addictive too.

30mm Flats as Mathers would have known them

Most of the time his battles were with a Parisian Doctor named Camille Laumonnier and one of the things they were famous for was an accurate depiction of the battle of Austerlitz on the Drawing room floor.
The Noble Prize winner Anatole France, who was an anti-occult journalist and writer, wrote about Mathers battles with Laumonnier.  It would be of great interest to get my paws on Mathers rules, but sadly they, along with his extensive toy soldier collection have all disappeared.  Ironically if the Mathers had been able to convince the British High Command of his rule set, he might have been able to achieve one of his greatest goals, which was to have been some use to the military.    Sadly he was ahead of his time.

Hastii la Viste (wargames Joke) 

Please note,  there are few pictures of me playing wargames and my toy soldiers have mostly been sold so I had to nick the pictures from other wargamers on the internet
http://handgrenadealiensgreatlament.blogspot.it/2010_10_01_archive.html, http://ilkleyoldschool.blogspot.it/2010/06/30mm-flats-old-school-alternative.html  and https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKKepMH3XcvC7ZtM27e8afEVtCmpi3PH9gqHT2UFexBNI5O3msPfmH6_ooLRbPZe8ZqhMYMJ6FeY3V9GbmuVcKKOILi7X78HmbZ_aZ8hftgURTVTPsQaE6ohRj4mtJmaa6IMX4dhCmDVQ/s1600/Hastati+01.jpg   I got out of it because wargames rules trends changed so that there was a greater emphasis on dice luck and my dice luck was appalling.  Well that is my excuse.

Angel Magic of the Bonorum

What follows is a paper I wrote in 2002 and ended up in Hermetic Virtues quite a while ago.  I  updated it in 2009 to include references to what we were doing in MOAA (we included part of this in our course work when we opened our 1=10 that year).  Sorry for submitting something so ancient but I am a bit busy writing about the Shem Angels for a new book at the moment) 

When Samuel Mathers included Enochian within the Golden Dawn system, he used a manuscript called Sloane 307 which he found in the British Museum.  The document post date's Dee by some years and is a practical way into the later Dee work.   There was a belief that Sloane 307 represented a magical tradition using Enochian dating back to a closed circle around Dee.

Unfortunately for Mathers this was not the case.  Sloane 307 lacked some important material from the first five of Dee's diaries and was probably based on a person who had gone through the published version of “A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed Between John Dee and some Spirits” by Meric Casaubon and cobbled together a working magic system.  Casaubon had managed to find all Dee's Diaries other than the first five books and edited these to fit his theories about how occultism could make a sane and clever man go mad.
The early Dee diaries give information on the assembly of the table, the seal of truth and the Heptarchia system of Angels.   All important if you are going to recreate Dee's system of Magic but less widely used by Golden Dawn magicians.
In the 1920's one of the leading lights of the Golden Dawn in New Zealand, Ewan Campbell visited the UK and conducted some research at the British Library on the Dee manuscripts.
Whare Ra member Percy Wilkinson told me that Campbell realised there was a lot missing from the conventional GD Enochian system and came back with lots of copies of the diagrams.  According to Pat Zalewski, Campbell was tipped off by Langford Gaston who was the head of the AO, so it might mean that Order was conducting a similar review of the Enochian system within the GD.
Mathers was aware that the material existed.  He had written a paper called “The Seven Days of Creation Applied to the Seven Branched Candlestick” which has been lost.  In his book Golden Dawn Enochian Magic, Zalewski has done a fine job in recreating what that document would have looked like.   However it is a work for adepts in the Golden Dawn system and provides a lot of detail which in the Outer Order is not needed.  However there is something in the Angels of the Bonorum which would be very useful to those beginning the path of magic and connected to the 1=10 grade.   In the Magical Order of Aurora Aurea we feel it will give the Zelator a basic form of 'low' magic which they can use to fulfil their needs in the Outer Order while a the same time performing the Higher Magic of the grade work.  You will be tested on the names and attributions of the Kings and Princes of the Bonorum but will be not required to demonstrate magical use of the system.
The Angels of the Heptarchia and these appear to be the Yetziratic levels.  They are essentially the Briatic Archangels as they manifest in Yesod.
  The names for these Angels were split between seven tablets (see diagram one) .  Each tablet represented something 'earthy' which is also connected with the Nephesh of humanity:

1. Wit and Wisdom with the magical image of a book.  This is intellectual knowledge.
2. The drive to rule and administer people with the magical image of a crown.
3. The desire for material comfort. Business and trade, represented by the magical image of robes.
4. The element of Water, with the magical symbol of a four footed animal.
5. The element of Earth, the magical symbol of herbs
6. The element of Air, the magical symbol of a fan
7. The element of Fire, magical symbol of flame in the hands

The angels were formed by combining one letter from each tablet. They have aspects of each of them and therefore can control over every aspect of the Nephesh of a person, and that of the whole of the world.
There are 49 Angels;  seven kings (Kether of Yesod), seven princes (Tiphareth of Yesod) and 35 governors (Yesod of Yesod).
The seven Kings are:

Baligon: (Haniel)
Bobogel: (Raphiel)
Babalel: (Kamael)
Bynepor: (Zadkiel)
Bnaspol: (Michael)
Bbapsen: (Tzaphqiel)
Blumaza: (Gabriel)

The seven kings carry the 'idea' of manifestation into Yesod.  The Princes job is to make it happen and they have a similar function to planetary intelligences.

Their names are: Bornogo (Venus), Befafes (Sun), Butmonom (Mars), Blisdon (Jupiter), Brorges (Mercury),Bragles (Saturn) and Bagenol (Moon).

The Governors have a similar function in this system to the spirits and they work at the closest level to material substance.

Governers of Venus
Bapnido
Besgeme
Blumapo
Bmamgal
Basledf

Sun
Basmelo
Bernole
Branglo
Brisfli
Bnagloe

Mars
Bazpama
Blintom
Bragiop
Bermale
Bonefon

Jupiter

Balceor
Belmara
Benpagi
Barnafa
Bmilges

Mercury
Baspalo
Binodab
Bariges
Binofon
Baldago

Saturn
Bormila
Buscnab
Bmninpol
Bartiro
Bliigan

Moon
Bablibo
Busdana
Blingef
Barfort
Bamnode


In addition to this Dee mentions the names of 42 ministers for each planet.  These are more spirits and their names can be found in the Heptarchia Mystica of John Dee edited by Robert Turner.  Their use is a beyond the requirements of a Zelator.
The Angels of the Bonorum are Planetary and are connected to days of the week and equally the days of creation. These are arranged in terms of Planets and thus everything can be placed on the diagram of the seven-branched candlestick diagram  which is presented to the candidate in the 1=10 ritual.

 When a candidate is exposed to the seven branched candlestick diagram their sphere of sensation takes in an impulse from the Briatic level, this then flows downwards to the Yetsiratic level where the Bonorum angels work to bring through the divine image to the physical levels.    They do this through manipulating those energy centres in the sphere of sensation that are under their planetary control.  The the East these are called

Chakras but the corresponding system in the West are the spheres on the Tree of Life.

If we look a the ritual we find that the description of the seven branched candlestick mirrors what we have looked at in regards to the Angels of the Bonorum .

We are told in the ritual that the the seven branched candlestick relates to the Mystery of Elohim, the seven Creative Ideas and that the seven Circles, which surround the Heptagram, represent the 7 Planets and the 7 Qabalistic Places of Assiah. And the 7 Lamps before the Throne on another Plane. Within each circle is a triangle to represent the Three-fold Creative Idea, operating in all things. On the right hand side of each, is the Hebrew name of the Angel who governs the Planet; on the left side is the Hebrew name of the sphere of the Planet itself, while the Hebrew letter, beneath the base, is one of the duplicated letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, which refers to the 7 Planets. The 7 Double Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet,
But the ritual also gives us other clues to the meanings of these angels.  It points out that each Angelic King controls seven directions Zenith, Nadir, East, West, North, South.
So then what can we do with this knowledge.  After all it is all very well saying that you can make a direct link between John Dee's and the Angels of the Bonorum and the Seven Branched Candlestick but what good is it to us to use these angels?
Dee was given the use of the Heptachic angels very early on in his magical career, long before he started messing around with any Enochian tablets.  It seems to me that this low level yetsiratic form of magic is designed to work with the lower aspects of the self and in particular how we interact with our material world.
Practically then it is a system of Earth magic which works on the person's sphere of sensation and onto the physical levels.
It is interesting that this is the one system of magic that Dee gives an example of a talisman and it is also significant that it is a healing talisman.  It could equally have been magic for money or job, or anything to do with the second, third, and fourth houses of the astrological chart - in short anything to do with the Earth element and the the 1=10 grade.
In the 1=10 grade the candidate is supposed to start working on the physical levels as a precurser to their magical work.  Normally the effects of the grade are to stuff up their finances and force them to look at life in a less escapist way. Illnesses are also fairly common in this grade.  But these are all negative experiences, things which should not happen if the magician was working to bring about change in the correct manner.
The Heptarchic Angels give the student a way of working with these energies and participating in the transformation.

The Tarot Moon – a positive force

I have been reviewing all my tarot material lately as I gather information on a book I have been meaning to write for a while.  What is interesting from a Golden Dawn perspective is how Samuel Mathers appears to have started well with the Tarot, but then clung on to some things within tarot to maintain a tradition he was undermining.
Take for example the Moon card. The traditional interpretation of the moon card is bad.  It represents illusion and suggests that the querant is being fooled by themselves or others.   This is the negative aspect of the Moon.
However Mathers made it clear that the Moon as seen by the Golden Dawn was on the side of Mercy and therefore its symbolism should be seen in a positive way.  The Golden Dawn attributed the card to the letter Qoph and Pisces.
The image of the letter Qoph is the back of the head which is the most primitive part of the brain.  It is that of the automatic consciousness and carries out functions which we do not think about.  The symbol is sometimes seen as an axe.  While you might think that an axe is simply a primitive weapon, in ancient Egypt it was a symbol for a God's power.  This reveals to us that magic works at the unconscious level and any miracles on the material plane happen by manipulating the subconscious.  The shape also looks like an ear, which means that we are dealing with psychic “hearing.”
When Qoph appears in a reading it is indicative of something powerful which is going on behind the scenes.  It might indicate that what is happening is unconscious.  Something new is coming and something powerful.  The Moon is the sun reflected and it is also the Sun at midnight.
One of the more unusual meanings of Qoph is a monkey.  This is a reference to what Buddha called the Monkey Mind.  It is that clever, but automatic consciousness, which drives us from one thing to another.  Buddha said that the human mind is as if filled with drunken monkeys, jumping around, screeching, and chattering, which need to be quietened before real meditation takes place.  This is the automatic conscious at its worst and it acts as a destraction.  In some readings Qoph can represent distractions and too much going on.

Qoph has the number 100, which is the same number as the Archangel Michael who was “like unto God”.  The fact that there is a 100, and Cabbalah says that there are ten spheres in each sphere of the Tree of Life, gives us the impression that Qoph is a totality, a perfect mirror image of the Universe.
The world is written Qoph [Back of Head, 100] plus Vav [Nail, 5] plus Peh final [Mouth, 800], all of this equals 905, which reduces to 14 (Temperance) and again to Vav.  905 is the same number as the word Resheth which means net.  Qoph then links all creation and forms a connection between all beings.  It gives a method for the unconscious forces to communicate (Peh).  The letter is important because it is first letter in the word Qesheth, which means rainbow.  This was the rainbow which God revealed to Noah after the flood, promising that there would be no more wiping out of humanity by floods.  Notice that a rainbow is prominent in the Temperance tarot key.  So when Qoph shows up in a reading, we are being told about communications, links and networks.  It is also indicative of promise that things will get better.
The Sepher Yetizirah says that God produced Qoph and made it “predominant in Joy, crowned, combined, and formed Pisces in the world, Adar in the year, and the spleen in man”.  Joy, is an unconscious reaction to a situation.  Joy takes away the power of restriction expressed by Ayin and makes a mockery of the illusion that is material reality.   Adar is the twelfth month of the Jewish calendar and it is seen as a  month of good fortune for the Jewish people.  Purim, the holiday of Adar, commemorates the "metamorphosis" of the Jews' apparent bad fortune to good.  The festival of Purim marks the high point in the joy of the entire year.  Cabbalists say that Purim is a time of great wonder, which symbolises the infinite essence of God's transcendent light entering into the finite context of physical reality and revealing itself.  Thus Qoph can indicate that things are about to change for the better and if joy is not already there, it soon will be.
So lets look at the astrological connection. Pisces rules secrets and is in turn ruled by Jupiter.  This emphasises the idea of something secret going on behind the scenes.  Jupiter is the sign of expansion and success and so it underlines the idea that things are getting better.   But this will not be so hot in the area of relationships and creativity.  Venus falls in Pisces, which means that love and creativity cards are weakened by the presence of Qoph in a reading.  Communications and magical operations will fail, as Mercury is in detriment in Pisces.
On the path of involution, which is questions of a material nature, Qoph is Venus acting on the Earth through Pisces.  As we have seen above, that is not a good thing.  Divine Love is weakened through the sphere of Pisces which explains a lot of why the world is in the mess it is in.  Divine Love instead manifests as material growth and evolution.  On the path of evolution it is the material nature working on divine love through Pisces.  Again, this is difficult in a spiritual sense, as the Earth cannot really understand the Venus side of God.  Instead it attempts to create more forms which is the earthly inclination.  For this reason Qopth sometimes relates to pregnancy, new theories and ideas, which are built on existing developments rather than true breakthroughs.
So if the Moon is looked at in a general reading,  it is the unconscious mind which links all things together, but with an  emphasis that something is always on things going on behind the scenes.  Nothing will be immediately obvious, but seems to be moving for the best.
It could be a period of great happiness, with everything slowly moving towards a perfection.  If things have been bad, Qoth indicates that there is a turning point about to happen which will change things.  The answer to questions that you seek might be found by networking and asking others.
It is a good letter for business because it shows that a plan will go forward and develop and expand.  But it could show up in a relationship reading for someone who has been concentrating too much on their work at the expense of their relationship.
In a relationship reading, the question “does he love me?” is probably not answered.  It suggests unconscious forces at play, but these usually work to block a successful relationship.  If it is a question about an established relationship, it could mean that while everything is under stress, everything is evolving and in time the true nature of the relationship will reveal itself, usually positively.  In a spiritual reading, the message is to quiet your monkey mind, relax and accept that you are moving towards your goal.
So this creates a totally different Moon card from that of tradition.   So the question is, “why did Mathers go for the traditional meaning of the card when he wrote it in Book T?”
Instead of using his own suggested attributions, Mathers said “Dissatisfaction, voluntary change. Error, lying, falsity, and deception.”  This is certainly not the mercy side of the lunar forces, nor has it anything really to do with Qoph or Pisces.

Do you have a problem with
Women Mr Crowley?

Based on this meaning Crowley would be justified in his particularly vile meaning of the Moon card in his Book of Thoth which he admits is for the waning moon. “... the moon of witchcraft and abominable deeds. She is the poisoned darkness which is the condition of the rebirth of light.“
While I would suspect that Crowley might be projecting his attitude to women in this meaning, both he and Mathers would be wrong.
While I am finding myself agree less with Paul Foster-Case's meanings of Tarot, I think he hit this one on the head quite well.
The Card is one of unconscious evolution.  The moon is the light in darkness it is the reason why we develop.   When we encounter it in regards to a problem it means that we are developing, slowly and surely towards something better.