The dangers of Flashing in the Golden Dawn vault

As part of my work on  building the Vault on the computer I have looked at a large number of posts online about the how the GD did it.

One of the things that strikes me as odd is how some of the various vault artists have said that they have tried to get squares to flash.

The central document for the creation of the Vault was “The Book of the Tomb” which was written by Westcott. It talks about two methods of creating a vault which are diametrically opposed. According to Westcott you have a base wall of set colours and on each of them you mix the colour of the planet.

The base wall is made up of flashing colours and so are the colours of the planetary walls. This method is called juxtaposition. It is the hardest to do because it requires you to mix colours exactly otherwise things go brown or black. Having made the walls on the computer I have found that the sweet spot for this mix is 20 percent the colour of the activating wall.

Here is the Mercury wall which is made using the back wall and a yellow activating backwall (at 20 percent) and a purple sigil colour.

The first thing you will notice is that the only colours that flash are those of Mercury which were already Yellow and Purple. If you think about it, it is completely logical. If you mix two colours together you will lose the ability for anything to flash. The magic then is not in the colours but the mixing of them. This art of mixing colours was and still is one of the lesser known aspects of alchemy. If you want to know more you should read the Alchemy of Paint by Spike Bucklow.

There is a lot that meditation on how the different walls change the base colour can reveal

However the Book of the Tomb suggests a cheats way. This was the method that was used by the Amon Ra temple in Edinburgh. This involves mixing the backwall as before and then painting the sigil of the backwall relative to the new colour.

With the same mercury wall you end up with something like this:

The logic here is based on a much familiar GD premise. That is that the flashing colour will activate the colour on the panel and bring its energy into the temple. Westcott said that this idea was acceptable however it is my contention that he missed the boat on this one (perhaps Amon Ra made it wrong, showed it to him and he didn’t have the heart to correct them).

My first teacher was initiated into a SM offshoot in the 1970s and he moaned that the vault (which was done the Amon Ra way) made you feel sick after a few minutes and you could not look at the walls after a while. He would have had a point, not only are all the sigils shouting at you they are also broadcasting all their energy at a higher pitch than the traditional wall. 

However they are also missing the subtly of the first wall. As you saw some parts of the wall flash... these are the pure aspects of it. This sends the magical message that those energies of the wall are still there. However the mixing shows us how these energies work to effect the various parts of the Kabbalah, the other planets etc. Say for example we were travelling in Yesod. The purples suddenly give way to a more yellow purple we know that we are exploring the territory more intellectually. Likewise if we find something needs to be managed in a chosen sphere we can transform the colours of that environment to tune them to what we want.

I am deliberately scratching the surface of what the vault colours can do, but it is just to give you an idea.

To make matters more interesting there have been other GD vaults. The Whare Ra vault for example has some completely different squares to the book of the Tomb. This involves changing some of the base squares. For example the Water Kerub is flipped so that instead of being blue with a flashing orange background it becomes Orange with a flashing blue background.

All these give the vault a different energy and the answers to different questions. However they are much deeper questions which are not solved by having an entirely flashing vault.

Please note that I aware of the blind (or typo) in these vault drawings.  You do not get any points for telling anyone what it is. 

Jeff and the Archetypal Occult Order

This never made it into When a Tree Falls.  It did not really work with the plot... 


According to Plato's School:

In the time of the dreaming the One God, who was known as Jeff (for Nigel would be stupid name for a major deity), had an idea. According to Plato, normally Jeff's Ideas were to create tables, the duck-billed platypus, caves, or Belgium, but this time it was more important.

I created the universe as a perfect mirror of who I am, so that I can understand myself better, he reasoned. Therefore I shall create, within humanity, a method so people can be like me. The more people are like me, then the more they will understand and the more I shall understand.

And so it was, in the dreaming, that the path of Magic was born. And humans picked up this idea and became Mighty. But a small human with magic was a terrible thing. The Magic would take the small human inside and make it think it was a God and say “look, here are the powers to prove it”.

Jeff was perplexed for he had cocked up and he had not really learnt much at all.

This magical stuff is good, but it is not for everyone and it needs order so the right people are trained. And so Jeff created the Idea of an Order which was based on himself as the Chief and Adam and Eve. They had got so good at this Magic stuff that Adam had become adept at the active principle of the universe and Eve and adept of the passive. So it was that the Order began and ended with the Chief of all Adepts and then there were the second and third adepts.

And together they created rules and divisions so that humanity learnt magic in stages. There was the magic of hearthfire, where people learnt to control their own personalities. And these people became adepts of Matter. Masters of their bodies, homes and in some cases whole empires.

But those who succeeded were offered the chance to became magicians where they learnt to use magic. And finally there were those who after testing became the Magic and took up their place alongside Adam and Eve.

In each age of humanity, the Order flourished in different forms and on different levels. On earth these formed Mystery Schools, which rose and fell, and sometimes small magical groups meeting in secret.

They might not have always met the Idea and mirrored the True and Invisible Order completely, but the needs of each age were met.

But the world started to change. People began to forget the power of the Story and replaced ideas with scientific method. In the 17^th century,  Johann Valentin Andreae realised that this was happening and wrote what he knew about the Order in the form of a story, so that the information may not be lost.

And the scientists of the age saw the story of the Rosicrucians as a call to science, others a new religion, still others hoped to make money off it.

But the story survived and those who understood it started to make contact with the real Order and they created groups even within others.

And over hundreds of years it came to be that out of a hundred groups, one would be chosen to connect to the real Order. The closest a human group came to reflecting Jeff's idea the more likely they were to be accepted. On earth they could appear alike, but on the deeper levels they would reveal their True connections.

The hands of the three chiefs gave lineage both to individuals and groups, but the lineage was to the Idea rather than the form. The hands of Jeff could be on one small lodge meeting in an upper room as part of a huge group.

Yet there were those who considered the form of the story and did not think that the Idea created a deeper reality. So they looked for the Order on Earth when it was in heaven. In absence of lineage they created their own idols out of paper signed by dead humans. But the hand of Jeff did not live in paper but in the work. And those who looked at the Idea literally were lost. They looked for human masters to serve and when they could not find worthy candidates they dreamed that they were talking to Secret Chiefs.

But still the True Order continued training, testing and making its connections. Those who heard its voice knew that they were not speaking to invisible creatures, but a hidden reality.

Sometimes they even told stories of these voices, so that their followers could understand the idea. And some of their students got it, and others took them literally.

Humanity really is a funny thing, thought Jeff.

Bill of Rights for esoteric groups

Nick Farrell's ideas for the melting pot

1. A teacher is also a student, and the teacher and the student are members of an Order.

2. The Bill of Rights applies to all those who have signed it and also indicates their attitude to individuals, Orders and Groups who have not.

For the Student:

1. has the right and duty to ask questions and receive an answer which they can understand.
2. has the right to be respected.
3. is allowed to develop their individuality and not have that dictated to them by the Order or the teacher.
4. should not be exploited for any spiritual or material gain.
5. should not be prejudiced against on the basis of the sex, religion, race, sexual preference or political views.
6. should not be engaged in attacking, defaming, slandering another member of another spiritual group. Debates about teaching are acceptable but these must not become personal.
7. No student should be forced to do anything that is against their own moral code or the laws of the land.
8. A student will do all they can to support the order.
9. A student will always act in a fraternal way and assist their brothers and sisters to develop on the path of return.
10. No student will attempt to control another or use magic to harm another.
11. A student the right to leave a group if they wish without having to receive pressure to stay.
12. A student will work the system they have been given under instruction.

A teacher has

1. The right to be respected.
2. The right to refuse membership or grades to those who do not meet the order's requirements.
3. The right to have their version of the system followed.
4. The right to call for assistance and not have to do everything themselves.
5. The right to say that they do not know an answer to a question, but will find out.
6. The right to be mortal.
7. to follow their spiritual path and not stop for the sake of the Order

An order

1. Recognises the right of another Order to exist even if its views are the antithesis of its own.
2. Does attempt to get another Order to do its bidding or claim “seniority” over it.
3. Does not take legal action against another.
4. Does not recognise the grades of another or attempt to steal members from another group. (People may leave to join another, but they must not be actively head-hunted recognising grades is a way to make it easier to jump ship).
5. Does not market or advertise itself as being superior to another Order.
6. Does not publicly defame or humiliate another group or an individual knowing them to be a member of that group.
7. Is not a business designed to gain any economic power but is a spiritual organisation designed for the improvement of its members.
8. Does not attempt magical attacks on another group or individual.
9. Attempt to keep channels of communication open with other Orders.
10. Do not attempt to interfere with the internal workings of other Orders or create schisms in other groups.
11. If disputes arise between members of groups then this must be dealt with between group leaders perhaps under the assistance of a neutral third party.