"The Delicate Matter about Historical Research into the Roots of the Golden Dawn" (sic) -

The delicate matter about historical research into the roots of the Golden Dawn:

There is a common misconceptions being spread, even amongst occultists, that academic historical research somehow are able to present the facts or truths about esoteric lineage, currents and transmission. Personally I encourage academic research into this field, and would like to see more of it, but at the same time one has to acknowledge its limits. Western esotericism is a very concealed business for obvious reasons. It has not become such an open matter until the early 20th Century, but even this openness and contemporary research cannot bring everything into public light. Obviously the most guarded secrets concerning these matters are concealed for all but the initiates, and oftentimes of very high grades.

The turn of the millennium has seen a new phenomenon of the occultist doing historical research meeting academic criteria. This phenomenon is not at all new in Freemasonry, whose most ardent historical researchers have been Freemasons, mostly because of Freemasonic libraries often being off limits for non-initiates. Academic research into the history of the Golden Dawn has also mainly been reserved to Freemasonic authors, because of its ties with so called “fringe masonry”, most prominently Ellic Howe who wrote the classic The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923, and his successor R.A. Gilbert. The latter is also a former member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia or S.R.I.A. (which can be regarded as a Masonic research lodge into the roots of Rosicrucianism).

These two authors has laid down the foundation for the later “liberal” stance amongst Golden Dawn Adepts in regards to the historical roots and the question of lineage, i.e. that it was solely concocted by W.W. Westcott and S.L. MacGregor Mathers. This liberal faction has been further advocated by Golden Dawn Adepts, with historical ambitions, like Pat Zalewski and lately Nick Farrell.

The other stream of Golden Dawn occultists with historical leanings has met quite some opposition from the “liberal camp” as not meeting the rigid academic criteria for research. The most noteworthy Golden Dawn Adept who started this “traditionalist” stance was in fact Ithell Colquhoun, who wrote the classic The Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn. Contrary to academic researchers as Ellic Howe and R.A. Gilbert, Colquhoun was an integrated part of the living tradition of the Golden Dawn and met several prominent Adepts of the 20th Century, amongst them Edward John Langford Garstin, a senior Adept of the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega, who also were her cousin. She also knew former Golden Dawn Adepts, as for example Aleister Crowley and Israel Regardie. She had the unique opportunity to know the word of mouth teachings of the Golden Dawn tradition, as regards its historical roots and lineage.

Actually it was Israel Regardie who first came out with a book giving an account of the rumours and oral tradition of Golden Dawn history, called My Rosicrucian Adventure, which came out one year before he started to published the corpus of the Golden Dawn in 1937. When New Falcon Publications printed a new and expanded edition of it, renamed as What You Should Know About The Golden Dawn, they appended Suster's Answer to Howe, by Gerald Suster. Suster was one of the very first to make the connection between the Golden Dawn and the Frankfurt-am-Main Freemasonic Jewish Lodge of Chabarath Zereh Boqer Aour (L’Aurore Naissante) and tying Kenneth MacKenzie as a possible link between the continent and Britain and the plausible author of the Cypher Mss. It is a well known fact that Israel Regardie himself was very displeased by Howe's presentation of the historical roots of the Golden Dawn; the last edition of his own historical account tried to remedy this fact. Hence, Regardie himself cannot be described as a liberal, even though he did breach his sacred vow.

Samuel Robinson (Frater Maui) recently stated the following regarding the L'Aurore Naissante, which probably goes against the agendas of many so called Golden Dawn scholars and historians, in response to the notion that this Lodge in 1807 became the refuge for many of its Jewish brethren when the Order of the Asiatic Brethren fell into abeyance:

For what's its worth this lodge is still active here in Germany, I found them a few months ago. Somebody in the SRIA also contacted them and said it has become normal masonry, however such is not the case, all the Nascent Dawn papers are circulated for study in a hermetic kabalistic masonic lodge here in Frankfurt.

To which Dr. Robert Word gave his confirming response:

A number of years ago a prominant member of AMORC, Irwin Wattermeyer (actually a member of the german speaking Grand Lodge of AMORC) traveled to Germany, and obtained initiation into the same Nascent Dawn kabbalistic masonic lodge in Frankfurt, gaining access to the arcane papers that you refer to. Wattermeyer resided in the S.F. Bay Area and was involved in many arcane societies of this type, both foreign and domestic.