Mathers' Secret Hair colour revealed.

I stumbled upon the attached picture when I was searching around recently, It shows Mathers taken in 1911 by the Daily Mirror. It is an interesting picture as it shows that Mathers' hair had gone white and he appeared to be dying it to keep himself looking as if he had succeeded making the philosopher's stone.

In 1911 he gave an interview to the Daily Mirror and apparently forgot to touch up his roots. As a result he has ended up looking remarkably like the Bride of Frankenstien.  We wonder if his Secret Chiefs approved.

Given the fact that Mathers was supposed to be dapper he looks a bit dishevelled, like someone who has spent the night drinking a little too much potion of eternal youth.

Mina would later complain that he was “drinking a little too much” – a problem that got worse after he returned from the UK. It might explain why he was unable to bring in much new information for the AO, although Mina later told Yeats that despite him being sick for three months during the First World War he was fit right up to the day he died.

Rome's Pantheon may have been built as a massive sundial

One day I will write in a little more detail about this really magical place.  This appeared in the Daily Telegraph this morning.




It is one of the best preserved buildings from the Roman world, a 2,000-year-old testament to the immense power and wealth of the empire.

But mystery has always surrounded what lies behind the unusual design of the Pantheon, a giant temple in the heart of Rome that was built by the Emperor Hadrian.

Now experts have come up with an intriguing theory – that the temple acted as a colossal sun dial, with a beam of light illuminating its enormous entrance at the precise moment that the emperor entered the building.

Constructed on Hadrian's orders and completed in AD128, the Pantheon's hemispherical dome is punctured by a 30ft-wide circular hole known as the 'oculus'.

It provides the interior of the building with its only source of natural light and allows in rain and – on rare occasions – snow.

Giulio Magli, a historian of ancient architecture from Milan Polytechnic,Italy, and Robert Hannah, a classics scholar from the University of Otago in New Zealand, have discovered that at precisely midday during the March equinox, a circular shaft of light shines through the oculus and illuminates the Pantheon's imposing entrance.

They have been working on the theory since 2009 but recently brought together all their latest research in a paper published in a scholarly journal, Numen.

The precise calculations made in the positioning and construction of the Pantheon mean that the size and shape of the beam perfectly matches, down to the last inch, a semicircular stone arch above the doorway.

A similar effect is seen on April 21, which the Romans celebrated as the founding date of their city, when at midday the sun beam strikes a metal grille above the doorway, flooding the colonnaded courtyard outside with light.

The dramatic displays would have been seen by the Romans as elevating an emperor into the realm of the gods – a cosmological affirmation of his divine power as he entered the building, which was used as an audience hall as well as a place of worship.

He was in effect being "invited" by the sun to enter the Pantheon, which as its name suggests was dedicated to the most important deities of the Roman world.

"The emperor would have been illuminated as if by film studio lights," said Professor Magli. "The Romans believed the relationship between the emperor and the heavens was at its closest during the equinoxes.

It would have been a glorification of the power of the emperor, and of Rome itself." The sun had a special significance for the Romans, as it did for the ancient Egyptians. The god Apollo was associated with the sun, and the emperor Nero was depicted as the Greek sun god Helios in a giant statue called the Colossus, which gave its name to the Colosseum.

One of antiquity's most remarkable examples of engineering, the Pantheon's fine state of preservation is thanks to the fact that it was converted into a church in the seventh century, when it was presented to the Pope by the Byzantine Emperor Phocas.

It retains its original bronze doors and marble columns, some of which were quarried in the Egyptian desert and transported by the ship down the Nile and across the Mediterranean to Rome at huge expense.

The building now contains the tombs of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of united Italy, and the Renaissance artist Raphael.

Inner and Outer

Since the Second World War, thanks to the efforts of Dion Fortune and her followers, magic has moved from doing things on the material level (while hopefully looking above) to working on the Inner Levels. This has been more noticeable in the UK, where Fortune's off-shoots have ruled the roost. As Marian Green once said “we are making beautiful temples and then going into them and shutting our eyes”.

Having trained in the Dion Fortune tradition, I can see its advantages and flaws. On the plus side it encourages the development inner vision to see what is really going on. However it lacks a lot of the personal development work which is required from, say, the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn. While it is true that these Inner Landscapes do encourage the knowledge of one's self, in practice this does not happen. People are too often taught that what they are seeing is “real” when a lot of the time it is subjective.

True, inner work ultimately leads to an objective reality, but within such groups the subjective reality often takes people on flights of sub-luna fantasy which is never checked. Visions which should be treated for psychological examination by the person, to discover more about themselves, end up as fantasy stories becoming touted as scientific or historical fact. Inner Plane contacts become psychological mothers and fathers demand an “unreserved dedication” to convert their students to nothing more than slaves in return for emotional support.

The Golden Dawn tradition has the opposite problem. It's flaw is that people too often see the material reality as all there is. They see the roles of the officers, the grades etc as important. It becomes a matter of doing the ritual and the tests rather than any inner development. Where Inner work is required, such as the use of the Z documents, it is glossed over, ignored, or performed so literally that it is largely pointless. Inner Plane contacts, Secret Chiefs, if accepted at all, become so twisted so that they become mortal and only talk to the head of an order to boost his manna.

An ideal system exists by merging both and finding a balance between the two ways. In the Golden Dawn this means training people to see the outer and Inner linked. However as the system is created this requires some adaptation. Although what is called pathworking is known within Golden Dawn groups, it is considered Second Order stuff which is not seen for nearly four or five years. It requires some of the training which the Dion Fortune system would be familiar with. While many would see this as oath-breaking, it is no more dramatic than allowing outer order students to do the middle pillar. The bonus is that they will see what is happening in a ritual, and be allowed to take part in the magic on the yetziratic level, which will make the whole thing more interesting for them.

For the Inner Light tradition, there needs to be better written and clearly defined patterns of ritual. People need to open their eyes and “see” inner realities mapped onto physical space. This will reduce the problems of disconnection from reality, which that tradition has suffered from.

Both traditions need to learn from each other.