The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn offers itself as a fraternal order of true fellowship with fellow seekers who have been where you are now, who are on the road to where you wish to go and who would be overjoyed to welcome you within their company and to assist you in the Great Work of the dawning of consciousness that has begun within you. 

 

“Child of Earth, long hast thou dwelt in darkness.  Quit the night and seek the day.”

The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie

 

Why a fraternal order or fellowship with fellow seekers?  This is answered by the ancient philosophers, in their understanding of the evolution of consciousness, when they stated, “nature unaided fails.”  Evolution has brought you to where you are today.  It is now in your hands to go further.  It can only happen with conscious choice to do so.  You must ask, so that to you it may be given; seek, so that you may find, knock, so that the way may open before you.  All this may be done in the company of others who will lead you from the outer darkness to the golden dawn of what you truly are and what you may truly do as such potential inner realities rise more and more perfectly within you and your outer life circumstances.

 

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn can fulfill the exalted claims that have been stated in these introductory comments.  The lodges of this Order are centers of initiation and instruction in the Western Mysteries.  To the seekers of the ancient world, a Mystery was an experience of ultimate reality that could only be expressed in silence.  It could only be personally experienced, within the self, and once you obtained the experience, your lips were then sealed.  The Mystery was presented to you in ritualized form by the initiates who had experienced it before you.  This would happen in the sacred enclosures of the Mystery Temples.  The development of the World’s major religions, as centers of increasing social and political power in the outer world, led to a movement away from the Mystery Temples so that seekers had to be taught from mouth to ear, in the master apprentice model.  The Mysteries had to go underground, but make no mistake; the early formation of Christianity was a Mystery Religion with its own initiations.  The creation of its sacred enclosures of cathedrals and churches needed craftsman trained, as they were trained for the building of the ancient temples, in the secrets behind the symbols employed within these sacred enclosures.

 

The builders of these ancient temples, in the fullness of time, became the builders of the cathedrals and churches and they maintained the secrets entrusted to them and to them was given the realization to build the temple of perfected humanity.  This conclusion was facilitated by the seekers who had obtained what they had sought and who then sought to provide to the seekers who were to follow.  They saw the potential within the craft of Free Masons as a vehicle for the building of the “Temple not made by hands.”  The human personality and body perfected for the indwelling of the spirit within.  The release of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes in the 14^th Century, to the European community, proclaimed that a way of perfecting the world existed through the perfecting of the individual.  This could be possible via the individual’s freedom of access to the Divine Source without the necessity of intermediaries as the World Religions would have us believe.  One such offshoot of this Rosicrucian impetus was the formation of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and to this society came S.L. MacGregor Mathers, W. Wynn Westcott, the men who would be directed to form the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.     

 

The formation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in the Nineteenth century, marked a return of the Western Mysteries in the format of lodges of fellow seekers upon the Path.  The jewels of obtainment of the various inner traditions of Judaism and Christianity and the Western Mystery Temples of Greece and Egypt were brought together in a cohesive whole so that a way of initiation into the inner reality of humanity could again be offered to those who sought such a way.  That way of obtainment and of answering what had brought you to this presentation exists for you today.  Many of the present day schools of Western occultism derive their origin from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and within its lodges, the great teachers and founders of these other Orders and schools had their instruction.  To name but a few of the founders of the schools and orders that followed, we may reference A.E. Waite, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Paul Foster Case and Israel Regardie.

 

Those who bring this instruction to you derive their right to initiate and instruct fellow seekers in a direct descent of initiation from Israel Regardie, he who ensured the survival of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn so that its great teachings and path of initiation would not be lost to those who seek to be more than human.  To initiate is to make a beginning and to embark upon a new way of life with an influx of the Inner Light that is always with us and for our guidance though the darkness of our present awareness knows it not.  The method is that of ceremonial magic and ritual which may be likened to an inner reality expressed through outer words and movements giving expression to inner states and images.

 

“By words and images are all powers awakened and reawakened.”

The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie

 

Seekers who feel called to explore a method of inner working, expressed in the outer form of ritual, may expect in our Order true teaching and true guidance on a road that appears to be moving outwardly, but also moves inwardly to the very essence of who you are as a human and to how you may one day become more than human through your divine essence becoming more and more perfectly expressed as a blessing to you and to the world.  The Qabala gives the directing roadmap of the Tree of Life, to give cohesion to the various jewels of obtainment held within its teachings, and to one expert on the Qabala, William Gray, it is a Ladder of Lights that will lead you true and by which the way is now open.  Consider well what has been presented to you.  Consider the boon of true fellowship with other seekers for there is much that can be given in the fraternity of your brothers and sisters in the Light that dawns in darkness though the darkness understands it not.  

 

 

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

www.hermeticgoldendawn.org.