Hermeticulture

The Sentinel and the Kerux are two of the lesser officers in the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn, and appear to play very different ceremonial roles from each other. The Sentinel is stationed outside of the Hall, and does not take an active part in the ceremony: their job is to guard the door. The Kerux is primarily the herald, making announcements and leading processions. At first glance the two offices appear to have little in common–but beneath the surface, they are very much connected.

The Sentinel and the Kerux are a matched set. The Z.1 document says that “The Kerux is the Herald, the Guardian and Watcher within the Temple, as Sentinel is the Watcher Without“. While their duties may be very different, they share a symmetry of function. The stations of the Sentinel and Kerux are on opposite sides of the portal or door to the Hall, and this portal is the focal point around which the two are reflected both geographically and symbolically.

On the outer side of the portal, it is the Sentinel who stands guard against the forces of darkness, and who ensures that all who enter the Hall are allowed to be present. The Sentinel prepares the candidate for their initiation, and accepts the grip or token, the grand word, and the password from each member before allowing them to enter the Hall.

On the inner side of the portal, the Kerux admits the members when they enter, watches over the reception of the candidate, makes all announcements and proclamations, and leads the Mystic Circumambulations. It is the Kerux who sees that the Hall is properly guarded, trading knocks at the door with the Sentinel, and who stands at the door while the Hiereus ensures that all present are able to give the signs of the grade. The Kerux also separates the Elements on the Altar into their four quarters during the Neophyte Ceremony, and recombines them prior to the Eucharist. When the candidate is admitted into the Hall, it is the Kerux who receives them, assisted by the Stolistes and Dadouchos.

When I say the Sentinel and the Kerux are a matched set, I am speaking literally. In the Z.1 document, we see that both officers are in fact godforms of Anubis. This is the only instance in which a god is shared between two offices and corresponds to both. “The Kerux is the principal form of Anubis,” it states, “as the Sentinel is the subsidiary form” (Regardie, The Golden Dawn, p. 341). The Coptic names of the two godforms of Anubis shed some further light. The Sentinel is ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲡ ⲙ̄-ⲡ-ⲉⲙⲛ̄ⲧ (Anoup m-p-Emnt), “Anubis of the West”, as the Kerux is ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲡ ⲙ̄-ⲡ-ⲉⲓⲉⲃⲧ (Anoup m-p-Eiebt), “Anubis of the East”. The two are thus geographically reflected across the portal of the Hall: the Sentinel on the outer or Western side of the door, the Kerux on the inner or Eastern side. The fact that the portal of the Hall is the fulcrum across which these two godforms operate in concert with each other highlights the liminal function of Anubis within the Neophyte Ceremony.

There is also a further shading of Anubis in both offices. Just as the Trinity within Christianity is composed of three hypostases, God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so too can other gods have hypostases through which they manifest while still maintaining a single underlying ousia or essence of being. While this is a more recent addition to the tradition, the Ciceros have posited that Anubis of the West is Ophois, or Wepwawet to use the Egyptian name rather than the Greek (Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition, p. 15). Although originally a separate god, Wepwawet was also associated with Anubis and subsumed into him. Originally both a funerary god and a god of war, and sometimes depicted as a soldier, this hypostasis of Anubis is especially appropriate for the Sentinel who stands as “the Watcher against the Evil Ones” (Regardie, p. 334) and who wields a sword to keep both physical and spiritual intruders at bay. The name of Wepwawet means “Opener of the Ways” or “Opener of the Roads”, and this is also fitting, as the Sentinel is the one who stands guard at the closed door and determines when it may be opened to those who approach.

No such hypostasis has been defined in the existing Golden Dawn literature for the form of Anubis corresponding to the office of the Kerux, as far as I am aware, but to me the connection couldn’t be clearer. In the same way that the Sentinel embodies Ophois, the Kerux wears the persona of Hermanubis. It is Hermanubis who wields the Caduceus, the staff of Hermes. He also makes all announcements in the Hall, as the messenger of the gods. And it is Hermanubis who is specifically the Psychopompos, the conductor of souls to the underworld. Similarly, it is the Kerux who admits the candidate into the Hall, and who leads them in procession to the paths of the East and the West where they are challenged by the Hierophant and Hiereus as the guardians of those stations. The Kerux also separates the Elements on the Altar, symbolic of the bodily organs of the deceased which are separated into canopic jars and watched over by Anubis. Of the Kerux, the Z.1 document states, “He is the Guardian of the Inner side of the Portal–the sleepless Watcher of the Gods and the Preparer of the Pathway to Divine Wisdom. ‘Watcher for the Gods’ is the name of the Kerux, and he is Anoo-Oobist, the Herald before them” (Regardie, p. 341).

The Mystic Circumambulations which the Kerux leads are symbolic of the Sun and the rise of Light, but they are simultaneously representative of a descent into the underworld of Amenti or the Duat, the abode of the Hall of Judgement where the Neophyte Ceremony symbolically takes place. The Sun which shines in the Hall is a reflected Sun, dimmed by the Veil and represented in the person of the Hierophant as Osiris. This is the Sun which shines at midnight. To quote Apuleius on the Mysteries of Isis, “I reached the very gates of death and, treading Proserpine’s threshold, yet passed through all the elements and returned. I have seen the sun at midnight shining brightly. I have entered the presence of the gods below and the presence of the gods above, and I have paid due reverence before them.” The Mystic Circumambulation which first leads the candidate around the Hall represents their journey in the underworld searching for the hidden knowledge, with Hermanubis leading the way wielding the Lamp and Caduceus. We can once more look to Apuleius, who provides us with an evocative description of Hermanubis leading the procession of Isis: “”Immediately after these came the Deities, condescending to walk upon human feet, the foremost among them rearing terrifically on high his dog’s head and neck–that messenger between heaven and hell displaying alternately a face black as night, and golden as the day; in his left the caduceus, in his right waving aloft the green palm branch” (quoted in Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. 2, p. 266).

Returning to the Sentinel, we can say that this hypostasis of Anubis also claims the epithet tpy-ḏw.f, “He who is upon his mountain”. This is the necropolis in the West over which Anubis stands guard, watching the tombs and protecting them from thieves and other intruders. This is a stationary and static form of Anubis, in contrast with Hermanubis who is typified by dynamism and movement in the underworld descent.

Thus the Sentinel and the Kerux are two halves of Anubis, reflected across the portal of the Neophyte Hall. They both partake of his symbolism, expressing it at rest in the case of the Sentinel, and in motion in the case of the Kerux. The two officers complement each other by design, even though on the surface it appears that they have little connection.

Making Introductions

The Sons of Horus represent four relatively obscure Godforms of the Invisible Stations within the Golden Dawn Neophyte Ceremony. While seldom given much attention, the role the Sons of Horus play behind the scenes should not be underestimated, for it is a critical one in the alchemical work that is effected during the Neophyte initiation and throughout the entirety of the Outer Order journey.

The Sons of Horus have been attested as a part of Egyptian funerary practice from the earliest records we possess. These four minor deities are especially referred to the four canopic jars that contain the internal organs of the deceased during mummification, and are held to protect them during the process. In the Neophyte Ceremony, these canopic jars are represented by the four Elements upon the Altar. When the Kerux removes Elements from the Altar, they symbolically begin the solve portion of the solve et coagula initiatory formula by separating the spiritual body of the candidate into its constituent parts. In one respect, this is mirrored by the reuniting of the Elements on the Altar later on in the Neophyte Ceremony prior to the Eucharist; in another respect, the separated Elements will not be fully reunited until they are perfected and crowned with Spirit when the initiate reaches the Portal Grade. It is during this time of separation that the Sons of Horus serve a crucial protective role.

As so very little is said about the Sons of Horus in the extant Golden Dawn material, however, it is clear that further introductions are in order. Rather than starting with Regardie, let’s begin by obtaining a more historical perspective on these canopic deities. We can begin with their names: imsti (Imseti or Imsety), dwꜣ-mwt=f (Duamutef), ḥpy (Hapy), and ḳbḥ-snw=f (Qebehsenuef).

As funerary deities with a very long history of use in ancient Egypt, certain predictable correspondences have arisen around each of these Sons of Horus.

Imsety has the head of a man, protects the liver of the deceased, and is watched over by the goddess Isis. His name may mean “He of the Dill”, and he may represent a personification of this herb.

Duamutef has the head of a jackal, protects the stomach, and is watched over by the goddess Neith. His name means “He who praises his mother”.

Hapy has the head of a baboon, protects the lungs of the deceased, and is watched over by the goddess Nephthys. His name means “He of Haste”, and is called “the great runner” in early sources.

Qebehsenuef has the head of a falcon, protects the intestines of the deceased, and is watched over by the goddess Serqet. His name means “He who purifies his brother by means of libation”.

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Function in the Golden Dawn

Now that we have achieved a basic familiarity with the dramatis personae, we can start to dive into a bit more detail on how they work within the Golden Dawn system. In terms of their function, we are told very little. The Sons of Horus are called “the Four Vice-Gerents of the Elements”, and we are told that “they are situated at the Four Corners of the Temple, at the places marked by the Four Rivers of Eden” (The Golden Dawn, 6th ed., p. 343). While relaying relatively little, however, Regardie does highlight the importance of the Sons of Horus during the critical point at which the candidate prepares to take the Oath. “In the Neophyte Initiation,” he states, “the Accusor rises from the base of the Altar at the time of the soul’s greatest danger. During this vulnerable time, four Invisible Stations attributed to the Sons of Horus protect the vital organs, symbolic of the essential life forces, until after the Oath has been taken and judgment has been passed” (p. 114).

It is worthy of note that the Sons of Horus are sometimes depicted as standing on a lotus flower, as in their representation in Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead (and it should be remembered that the hieroglyphs on the Black Pillar are drawn from this spell!). This symbolically connects them to the depiction of Harpocrates, another of the Godforms of the Invisible Stations in the Neophyte Ceremony, who stands or sits upon the Lotus and may be said to represent the Higher Self of the candidate.

While the parentage of the Sons of Horus isn’t exactly consistent–and indeed the Sons of Horus themselves are at times instead referred to as the sons of Atum, Geb, or Nut instead–a spell from the Coffin Texts states that Isis is the mother of the quartet and that Horus the Elder is their father. This is the godform of Hoor Ouêr or Haroueris, maintained in the Neophyte Hall by the Past Hierophant. This particular godform is unique in that it stays largely dormant throughout the Neophyte Ceremony, except during the aforementioned critical point at which the Hierophant administers the Neophyte Oath to the candidate. During the point at which the Hierophant advances between the Pillars to the Altar, he takes on the godform of Hoor-Ouêr and symbolically treads upon and stamps down the Evil Triad, binding it in place while the Oath is administered.

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A Puzzle of Direction

Among the more significant correspondences historically assigned to the Sons of Horus is that of directionality. While this directionality did change a bit in how it was represented, most notably when the direction of burial changed from north-south during the Middle Kingdom to west-east in the New Kingdom, the directional associations of the four canopic gods is generally a matter of historical record.

It is rather confusing, then, that there should be apparent disagreement or debate regarding their positioning in the Hall of the Neophytes. Yet this is precisely what we see in modern Golden Dawn practice. Regardie is clear in the attributions he lays out: beginning in the Northeast and moving clockwise, we have Imsety (NE), Duamutef (SE), Ahapi (SW), and Qebehsenuef (NW). We can see a different arrangement, however, in the Ciceros’ works: in Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition (p. 16), the positions of Ahapi and Qebehsenuef are flipped; and given the elemental correspondences the Ciceros provide for the Sons of Horus, this does not appear to be a mere error.

This discrepancy was what originally sent me down the rabbit hole of research with respect to the Sons of Horus, and it has proved to be a deeper and more interesting one than I had at first anticipated. We can posit that the original Golden Dawn had a reason for ordering the Sons of Horus as they did; and we can further posit that the Ciceros had a reason for changing this ordering. By delving into the traditional symbolism and attributions of the canopic gods, we can perhaps find a foothold which will allow us to comment on what that reasoning was, and moreover to determine for ourselves what the correct layout in the Neophyte Hall should be.

J. W. Brodie-Innes (Frater Sub Spe), who along with Robert Felkin and Percy Bullock founded the Stella Matutina offshoot of the Golden Dawn, turns out to be an important resource for us on this front. Brodie-Innes wrote a paper “The Canopic Gods: The Symbolism of the Four Genii of the Hall of the Neophytes”, which is included in Regardie (6th ed., pp. 358-362). This paper lays out a rationale for the directional ordering of the Sons of Horus, and additionally attributes them to the four Elements. His assignation of the gods to the directions is based principally on a rather curious argument having to do with the division of the four canopic organs between the alimentary system and the circulatory system, and further divided between “that which divides or distributes to the body” and “that which casts out from the body” (p. 359). With this scheme of fourfold division set, Brodie-Innes contends that “the organs of the Alimentary System, the most material and earthy, should be in the North, and the warm and vital heat of the Circulatory System should be to the South, while in the cross division, the Receptive and distributive organs should be placed to the East, the source of Life and Light, and the organs that purify and cast out should be to the West that borders on the Qlippoth” (p. 360). This scheme of ordering results in a set of directional attributions that matches those of the Sons of Horus in the Neophyte Hall, except that it places Qebehsenuef in the Southwest and Hapy in the Northwest–an arrangement which exactly matches that given by the Ciceros.

But this arrangement does not match the layout given in the Z.1 positions of the Invisible Stations, and indeed Brodie-Innes accounts for this. The arrangement of the Sons of Horus as proposed in this scheme of ordering “would, as it were, symbolise the entire separation of the Alimentary System and the Circulatory System, which is contrary to Nature, for they continually counter-change, and thus arises Life. Wherefore in the Hall of Two Truths, the portions of Ahephi and Kabexnuf are reversed” and the order becomes that given in the Z.1 (p. 361).

Frankly, I personally find this latter rationale to be a bridge too far on Brodie-Innes’ part, and it seems to me reminiscent of the sort of semantic sleight-of-hand that one resorts to when a theory almost but not quite fits the details. But we shall see if any better scheme presents itself as we tread onward. In the meantime, we make a note of it and move on.

Now, Brodie-Innes appears to be using a different scheme of correspondences for the particular organs associated with each Son of Horus than was common, as we can see in looking at his directional schema. He begins it in the North with the stomach, because this is “the most material and earthy” of the bodily organs. He therefore ascribes Imsety to the Northeast; for, as he states, “Ameshet was also termed ‘The Carpenter’ for he it is who by the medium of his organ, the Stomach, frames the rough materials and builds up the structure of the body; to him the Stomach and Upper Intestines were dedicated” (p. 360). Similarly, Hapy is given the intestines, Duamutef is given the lungs, and Qebehsenuef is accorded the liver. While this differs from the most common arrangement, I must assume Brodie-Innes knew what he was talking about with respect to the sources that the Golden Dawn drew from, at least insofar as he was familiar with them.

Brodie-Innes proceeds to ascribe elemental correspondences to each of the Sons of Horus, which largely serve to connect them to the existing elemental attributions of the directions within the Neophyte Hall. Suffice it to say that in Brodie-Innes’ reckoning each of the Sons of Horus takes on an elemental attribution. Oddly, however, the Brodie-Innes paper lays these attributions out ascribing Qebehsenuef to the North/Earth and Hapy to the West/Water, but the text in the following paragraph contradicts the text and reverses the directional and elemental attributions for them both. Given that Brodie-Innes has just made much of the counterchanging of these two names with respect to his Alimentary/Circulatory scheme of division, this reversal is quite surprising. One isn’t quite sure whether to chalk this up to an error on Brodie-Innes’ part at this point. The principle of charity requires that we assume Brodie-Innes knew his sources intimately and was aware of what he was doing; but he appears here to have stated one thing in the text and immediately proceeded to say something else entirely.

Regardless of whether Brodie-Innes was in error or whether he simply lost me in a brilliant leap that I was not able to follow, it does not seem that his monograph on the Sons of Horus is likely to shed any more light on the directionality question than we currently possess. So let us back out of this line of inquiry and take stock of what we are given. The symbolic language we are using is built on layers of correspondences, and certain of those correspondences will always have greater fixity of meaning or weight of attestation. For correspondences “baked in” to the Golden Dawn system, we must take them as they are given. For all the rest, we have leeway. In this case, we know the names of the four Sons of Horus, we are given ordinal directions in the Z.1, and thanks to the Brodie-Innes paper we can conclude that the source the Golden Dawn drew from had a pairing of the individual organs to the canopic gods that was at variance with the most common attributions. These are the elements of meaning we are required to work with and account for. To wit:

• NE: Imsety (Stomach)
• SE: Duamutef (Lungs)
• NW: Qebehsenuef (Liver)
• SW: Hapy (Intestines)

In the interests of taking stock, it is also worth observing that we are given color notes on the appearance of the four Sons of Horus. These appear to have no direct connection to any potential elemental attribution, however, so they do us little service in attempting to decipher the language of meaning that the Sons of Horus are communicating within the Neophyte Hall.

It should be noted that the Sons of Horus also appear as Enochian chess pawns, in which context they also possess set elemental attributions; but these differ starkly from the elemental attributions in the Brodie-Innes paper, and we can infer as a result that the elemental correspondences of the Sons of Horus as Enochian chess pawns are unconnected to their elemental correspondences as Godforms of the Invisible Stations.

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Getting Back to Basics

So where does this leave us? As so often happens when investigating Golden Dawn symbolism, we are forced to return to historical sources to seek meaning. We are fortunate in this respect because while the directional attributions of the Sons of Horus were not necessarily constant throughout history, their directionality is nonetheless one of their strongest historical associations. So let’s try to better understand what those directional attributions were, how they changed over time, and how they might be reflected in the meanings selected and choices made by the Golden Dawn founders when they first architected the system. With any luck we can arrive at an understanding that leads us to the same destination, even if we find ourselves arriving at it by a different journey.

Leaving aside everything else for a moment, we can begin with the knowledge that “the classic Middle Kingdom arrangement” of the Sons of Horus as laid out on “the typical arrangement of a Middle Kingdom rectangular coffin” places Imsety and Duamutef on the East side, and Hapy and Qebehsenuef on the West (Collier, p. 62). This accords with what we are given in the Z.1, and seems like a good place to drive our stake as we attempt to survey the territory. Further, it appears that while the Sons of Horus were closely linked to the ordinal directions in Middle Kingdom burials, they generally only took on associations with the cardinal directions when the direction of burial changed with the New Kingdom. Given the source material the Golden Dawn drew from, we can likely narrow our focus to the Middle Kingdom period when it comes to fixing our reference point of meaning.

Now we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that these directional attributions ultimately have a physical basis for their meaning. The directionality of the Sons of Horus arises solely because of the orientation of the coffin of the deceased, and it is therefore this physical arrangement that has primacy of meaning–regardless of what arrangement made it into the Golden Dawn system. We must therefore seek to decode that meaning, and to understand it on its own terms, before we can properly accept or evaluate what we are given within the Z.1 document.

And here, unfortunately, is where we run into problems. Because while the classic Middle Kingdom arrangement did place the Sons of Horus in an east/west orientation that coincides with their layout in the Z.1 document, this means that on each side of the coffin you will have one canopic god who is at the head and another who is at the foot. And it doesn’t take a lot of looking at Middle Kingdom coffins to make it very obvious that Imsety and Hapy consistently correspond to the head of the coffin, and Duamutef and Qebehsenuef belong with the feet.

Below you can see an image of the Coffin of Nakhtankh, a Middle Kingdom coffin bearing the traditional funerary inscriptions. The picture is of the Eastern side of the coffin, as indicated by the presence of the eyes: bodies were laid in the coffin on their left side, facing towards the east, such that they could look out of the eyes on the coffin to see the rising sun. The name of Imsety has been circled in red at the head of the coffin, and the name of Duamutef has been circled at its foot.

This all means that we end up with a set of consistent ordinal directions for the Sons of Horus as attested in the primary source material (i.e. the Egyptian coffins themselves). And as much as we can dislike the conflict between this arrangement and that given in the Z.1 document, we cannot avoid it. In circumstances such as this, where we are able to discern the language of meaning that the system is attempting to use and are further able to determine that the system is using that language incorrectly, we must choose to preserve the integrity of the meaning rather than that of the structures encoding that meaning that have been handed down to us. Consequently, I find that we must reverently discard the Z.1 directional attributions which seek to reflect the positioning of the Sons of Horus on the Egyptian burial coffin, and replace them with attributions which faithfully reflect the meaning which was originally intended.

Curiously, when we lay out the four Sons of Horus in a diagram corresponding to their orientation around a Middle Kingdom coffin, we can see that the elemental attributions for which Brodie-Innes advocated are reflected even more perfectly than they are if one adheres to the ordinal directions as given in the Z.1 document. Whereas Brodie-Innes was forced to account for the flipping of Hapy and Qebehsenuef in his reckoning, an arrangement which places the “Vice-Gerent of Water” in the Northwest and that of Earth in the Southwest, we can see in the diagram below that when we preserve his elemental attributions but simply place the four Sons of Horus in their correct ordinal positions, the Elements line up seamlessly with their cardinal directions–only rotated by 45 degrees.

Put simply, we could not have anticipated a more ideal outcome. By acknowledging the error inherent in the Z.1 configuration of the Sons of Horus, we have arrived at a conclusion that largely vindicates Brodie-Innes’ own work (despite its attempts to justify that error), and which consequently yields a more pleasingly regular mapping of the Elements onto the Neophyte Hall as represented by the Godforms of the Invisible Stations.

We have also solved the mystery of why the Ciceros flipped the ordinal directions of Hapy and Qebehsenuef in Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition, as the above diagram now coincides with the attributions they provide. One can infer that they too observed the mismatch between the directional attributions of the Sons of Horus in the Z.1 and their historically attested correspondences, and corrected for the error in their material.

Curiously, Brodie-Innes may not have been barking up the wrong tree when it came to his Alimentary/Circulatory division model either: Maarten Raven argued in a paper published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology that the Sons of Horus may have found the directional attributions they did because the lungs and liver occupy a higher position in the body than the stomach and intestines, thus explaining the positioning of Imsety and Hapy toward the head and Duamutef and Qebehsenuef toward the feet. Remarkably, given very different correspondences of the four organs to the four Sons of Horus, Brodie-Innes not only proposed a similar hypothesis but managed to arrive at a similar end point.

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There and Back Again

This has been a rather meandering journey, and I appreciate your sharing it with me. From a purely informational standpoint I could no doubt have written up my conclusions and presented them in a much more straightforward fashion, but to me the journey is as important as the destination: how you get somewhere matters just as much to me as where you get in the end. I believe there is value in taking you along for my process of inquiry, in letting you wrestle with the question alongside me, in laying out and evaluating the evidence together. And in a case such as this, where we conclude that the system is in error and needs modification, I believe we indeed owe it to the tradition we hold sacred to wrestle with it in this manner.

And I promise, I’m not just saying all of that because I hate editing. Skipping on the editing is merely an added bonus.

So with the mystery solved, let’s have a reintroduction to the Sons of Horus, shall we? What follows is largely a combination of the words of Regardie and Brodie-Innes, condensed and with the relevant attributions corrected. I have additionally changed the attributions of the Sons of Horus to their respective bodily organs such that they match what is generally historically attested, as I see no touchpoint of meaning within the system that could be impacted by making such an alteration. I have also elected not to present the two forms of the names of the Sons of Horus, which are ostensibly two different renderings of each name in Coptic that correspond to different spiritual forces, because the use of the Coptic language within the original Golden Dawn was almost hopelessly corrupt. Beyond these two alterations/omissions, I have endeavored simply to present the entirety of the information available to me.

The Sons of Horus are the four Vice-Gerents of the Elements and are situated at the four corners of the Temple, at the places marked by the Four Rivers of Eden in the Warrant; for the body of a Warrant, authorizing the formation and establishment of a Temple, represents the Temple itself–of which the Guardians are the Kerubim and the Vice-Gerents in the places of the Rivers.

Imsety (man-headed) is placed in the North East between the Man and the Bull. He protects the liver. His name may mean “He of the Dill”, and he may represent a personification of this herb. He is watched over by Isis (i.e. the godform of the Praemonstrator). Being the Vice-Gerent of Air, Imsety has the head of a man, as does the Kerub of Air which is associated with Aquarius.

Duamutef (jackal-headed) is placed in the South East, between the Lion and the Man. He protects the stomach. His name means “He who praises his mother”. He is watched over by Neith (who is arguably the godform of the Dadouchos). Per Brodie-Innes, the jackal “is the purveyor of the Lion (for these are the Vice-Gerents of the Elements, while the Kerubim are the Lords thereof)”, whence his kinship with the Fire Kerub of Leo.

Hapy (ape-headed) is placed in the North West, between the Bull and the Eagle. He protects the lungs. His name means “He of Haste”, and is called “the great runner” in early sources. He is watched over by Nephthys (i.e. the godform of the Imperator). Brodie-Innes states that the Ape “represents the Elemental Strength” of Earth which complements the “Divine Strength of the Eternal Gods” as represented by the bull, the Earth Kerub of Taurus.

Qebehsenuef (hawk-faced) is placed in the South West, between the Eagle and the Lion. He protects the intestines. His name means “He who purifies his brother by means of libation”. He is watched over by the goddess Serqet or Sakhet, the scorpion goddess. As such, the connection to the symbolism of the Water Kerub of Scorpio needs little explanation.

This hymn follows the ancient Egyptian offering formula, at least in part. It is offered as a gift to Hermanubis, and for the benefit of any who might wish to work with him. For those of you who speak Italian, be sure to check out Yuri Abietti’s translation at La Stella a Otto Punte!

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Hail Hermanubis
Lord of Amenti
Thou who art Wepwawet, the Opener of Ways
Psychopompos, the Conductor of Souls
and Ferryman of the Dead
Thou Dog-Star, Brightest in the Night
Thou who belongs to the things above and to the things below
Khenti Amentiu, Foremost of the Westerners
Whose Staff bears the Serpents of Wisdom
Whose Feather of Ma’at he wields
Thou Render of the Veil
or whatsoever thou wishest to be called:

I give thee sacrifices, hymns, praises, and sweet sounds
In tune with heaven’s harmony.
I give thee invocation offerings of beer, of bread, of incense, of praise,
And every good and pure thing upon which a god lives
For the sake of my soul.

Hear me, O Hermanubis, Lord of Night, and draw thou near.
I bid thee to grace me with thy divine presence.

I make of myself an offering unto thee:
Guide me faithfully, now and in the hereafter.
This is the going forth of my voice:
Call me, and I will answer.
Speak to me, and I will listen.
Open the way, and I shall follow.
Take my hand in thine, and I shall walk with thee.
Lead me into the abundant Field of Reeds;
Even unto the Field of Offerings where Osiris dwells.

Those of you who come primarily for my blog may have missed the Hermetic Audio Glossary page on my site, and until recently you’d have had good reason for this: the project has been rather dormant as I’ve had other things on the front burner of late. But I’ve recently added some fresh content to it, including the pronunciations of the names of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life and their various correspondences, as well as the Coptic names of the Golden Dawn godforms of the Neophyte Hall–the latter of which is intended to company my earlier paper on the same topic.

This post isn’t just promoting the new content, though: it’s also a solicitation for input. The Hermetic Audio Glossary is intended to be a resource to help people who might have seen a given word, name, phrase, or prayer in print, but never heard it said before and are unsure how to pronounce it properly. Got something you don’t know how to pronounce? Chances are you aren’t the only one! Please let me know, and I’ll get it recorded and uploaded.

Right now much of my content is Golden Dawn themed (because of course it is), but this project is intended to cover all periods and flavors of Hermeticism and related currents; this encompasses the PGM, the Orphic Hymns, Enochian, the grimoire tradition, and most other things you could think of. So if you have requests, shoot them my way!

Yuri Abietti has one again done me a kindness: having previously translated my earlier post about Hermanubis and the “Apherou” epithet into Italian over on his La Stella a Otto Punte blog, he has now provided a translation for my “Discovering Hermanubis” post as well: Alla scoperta di Hermanubis.

A heartfelt grazie to Yuri once more–and it’s so exciting to find and connect with someone else who has worked with Hermanubis to compare notes!

Thanks to Yuri Abietti, who blogs at La Stella a Otto Punte, my previous article on Apherou, the spurious epithet of Hermanubis, has been translated into Italian. Many thanks, Yuri! You can find his three-part series on his Ritual of Hermanubis there also, which I highly recommend.

While you’re there, check out his excellent article on Hekate, “Ekate, la Luna Nera e il Rituale del Crocicchio“. It’s a great bit of research!

For the past month or so I’ve been feeling a gentle calling from Hermanubis, and have decided to answer that call. Because I’m me, however, I wanted to research as much information as I could possibly find about this god who has been so fascinating to me of late. This is a summary of my research, presented to you so that others who are interested in working with him or learning more about him can benefit from my efforts.

Precious little is written about Hermanubis (Greek: Ἑρμανοῦβις, Coptic: ϩⲉⲣⲙⲁⲛⲟⲩⲡ, Egyptian: 𓅃𓏺𓅓𓇋𓈖𓊪𓅱𓁢) that survives from the ancient world, and there appears to be little written about him overall. A syncretic fusion of the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Anubis, he is a cynocephalic (“dog-headed”) god who is mentioned briefly by Plutarch and Porphyry. The latter source in On Images calls him “composite, and as it were half Greek, being found among the Egyptians also”, which effectively tells us nothing that we didn’t know already. Plutarch in De Iside et Osiride speaks him as “belonging in part to the things above and in part to the things below”, i.e. as part heavenly and part chthonic, in a phrase that beautifully mirrors the Hermetic axiom “as above, so below”. He also states that “for this reason they sacrifice to him on the one hand a white cock and on the other hand one of saffron colour, regarding the former things as simple and clear, and the others as combined and variable”.

And there you have it. Sadly, this appears to be all that we have in terms of direct information about Hermanubis from primary sources.

In the modern day, practitioners who venerate Hermanubis have generated a bit more of a body of work around him, but this is still sparse at best. He is often referred to with the title Apherou, thanks almost entirely due to Gordon White’s popularization of the epithet in The Chaos Protocols almost a decade ago, but we have already seen that this word is incorrect and should instead be Wp-wꜣwt or Wepwawet, meaning “Way-Opener” and rendered in Greek as Ophois. White also notes that he is identified with Sirius, the dog star, the heliacal rising of which in the Eastern sky marked the annual flooding of the Nile–in part because this time heralded greater disease and death. He further reports that Hermanubis is mythically the son of Isis and Serapis.

As a god, Hermanubis is primarily a psychopomp, or a conductor of the souls of the dead to the underworld. As such, he is generally depicted holding the Caduceus staff of Hermes and a feather representing the Shu feather against which the heart of the dead person is weighed on the scale of Ma’at in the Hall of Judgement. He is also depicted, at least in the statue of him preserved (perhaps ironically) in the Vatican, bearing the lunar disc of Anubis on his head.

In terms of offerings, apart from the aforementioned white and saffron cocks mentioned by Plutarch, there is general consensus that dark beer and bread are appropriate offerings for Egyptian deities in general, these being the “golden symbols of life” in ancient Egypt. Spring water is generally held to be appropriate for Hermanubis as well, and White additionally suggests rum, aquavit, and storax or myrrh incense as appropriate offerings. Based on the work that Caitlin Coppock has done with Hermanubis oils at Sphere + Sundry we can posit some additional suitable offerings for him. These include wine, the hair of a black dog, beeswax, gold, olive oil, cemetery ivy, fallen autumn leaves, poppy, hops, barley, and dried mushrooms. Obsidian and snowflake obsidian may also be appropriate for Hermanubis. Cypress, especially cypress growing in a cemetery, is especially apropos for Hermanubis as this tree had funerary associations for the ancient Egyptians.

Caitlin Coppock additionally provides valuable notes to those who would approach Hermanubis or work with him. He is the render of the veil between the living and the dead, and as such he is excellent to petition as a patron to facilitate ancestral work and other forms of necromancy. He can help specific souls to navigate the death realms, facilitates communication between incarnate humans and the deceased, and can allocate offerings to specific dead (or classes thereof). He can provide gnosis around death and dying, helping individuals to confront their own mortality. He can provide guidance through meditation, trance, dreaming, and ritual, and is considered an initiatic deity–a function especially alluded to by the name of the (likely fictional) Hermanubis Temple of Golden Dawn history.

Coppock also provides an especially curious symbol for Hermanubis on her product labels, similar to the Mercury symbol but terminating in a six-rayed star perhaps signifying Sirius. Truly, she’s done modern-day devotees of this god a service by providing so many rich resources for those seeking to venerate him.

Finally, Hermanubis is one of the figures depicted in the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot on the Wheel of Fortune card. Of this Paul Foster Case writes in The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages that “Hermanubis (Hermes-Anubis), jackal-headed Egyptian god, rises on the right side of the wheel, to represent the evolution of consciousness from lower to higher forms. His jackal’s head represents intellectuality. His red color typifies desire and activity. He symbolizes the average level of our present human development of consciousness. Beyond him and above him is a segment of the wheel which only a few humans being have, as yet, traversed” (p. 122).

It is also a fruitful exercise to dive into the separate persons of Hermes and Anubis, to better understand the overlap between the two deities and the ways that they complement each other, and to find other epithets and inspirations to draw out from this research.

For those of you desiring to do magical or devotional work with Hermanubis, I wish you well and would love to hear about your experiences of him! Since first calling upon him recently I have already received multiple dreams from him, which is a very new thing for me as I almost never have dreams of any spiritual significance. May he enrich your life with his presence, and when you leave this life may he guide you safely to the sacred halls of Amenti.

I’ve recently been doing a research deep-dive into the god Hermanubis, the results of which I’ll be presenting in a future blog post. In the meantime, however, I’ve come across a particularly curious bit of information regarding his most popular epithet. Almost every English-language source I’ve encountered (and one Italian source as well) gives the name “APHEROU” as a name of the god, ostensibly meaning “way-opener”.

I regret to inform you that this information is dead wrong.

The misunderstanding derives from Gordon White’s The Chaos Protocols, in which he echoes a statement given by David Gordon White (no relation) in his 1991 book Myths of the Dog-Man (pp. 43-44). In this text, the author puts forward an assertion that “Anubis was also called the ‘Way-Opener’ (Apherou, Oupherou)” and relates that the name of St. Christopher can be read not merely as Christo-phoros (lit. “Christ-bearer”) but also Christ-Apherou, “the way-opener of the Christ”, pointing out that this means he represents “a fusion of names and functions of the same order as Hermanubis”.

While this hypothesis has been refuted by David Woods in his 1994 article “St. Christopher, Bishop Peter of Attalia, and the Cohors Marmaritarum: A Fresh Examination”, as reported by Sarah Victoria Buxton, the “Apherou” epithet has continued to work its way into the popular imagination (at least to the extent that any work on Hermanubis can be considered “popular”).

It turns out that David Gordon White sourced this information from Claude Gaignebet’s two-volume 1986 work, A plus hault sens : l’ésotérisme spirituel et charnel de Rabelais. While Gaignebet may have been a notable folklorist and ethnologist, it seems apparent that he was either sorely lacking in knowledge of the Egyptian language or was more interested in popular etymology than in the historical variety.

This is the sole source for the “Apherou” epithet, and it falls apart upon even a cursory attempt to corroborate its veracity. Faulkner’s A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian yields wp or wpi for “open”, pronounced “wep” or “oop”, and one can see how “ap” in “Apherou” could be derived from this word. There is however absolutely no word meaning “road” which bears even a remote resemblance to “herou”.

On the other hand, there is a very well-known phrase in Middle Egyptian which does bear fruit. This is Wp-wꜣwt, from the aforementioned wp plus the word wꜣt meaning “road” or “way”. It is also the name of the god Wepwawet, whose name means precisely “way-opener”, and which Faulkner notes is also an epithet of Anubis despite also being a separate and distinct deity unto himself.

And there you have it. Thanks to the confusion of a single author, Claude Gaignebet, later perpetuated via Gordon White, literally every single person who works with Hermanubis for the better part of the last decade is likely using an epithet with an entirely spurious etymology. I therefore strongly advocate for replacing “Apherou” with “Wepwawet” in your workings with him, for obvious reason.

UPDATE: Yuri Abietti, the author of the La Stella a Otto Punte blog (which was the Italian source I mentioned in my article) has done me the honor of translating this post into Italian. You can find his translation here. Thank you, Yuri!

O thou great goddess Ma’at, beloved Daughter of the Sun 
Thou of the Beautiful Face who sees the heart, and measures what is right and true
Thou Changeless Lady of Heaven who preserves order and banishes chaos 
Thou Queen of Earth who keeps all in balance and equilibrium 
By the desire of my heart and the words of my mouth, I call upon you 

When Ra spoke the first word, you had already been created 
Thou Great Gift of god, given to those whom he wishes 
Thou pervadest the whole of creation, immanent in all things 
Binding them together in an indestructible and harmonious unity 

Thou true witness who hears prayers, 
Heed my call and be present here with me 
Thou who governs the works of piety and religion, 
See that my intentions are pure and that my spirit is humble before thee 

Thou Guardian of the Threshold and Preparer of the Way for the Enterer, 
Thou Reconciler between Light and Darkness, 
May I walk in thy truth and in thy ways of righteousness all the days of my life
Make my heart as light as the Shu feather on thy Scales 

O thou Lady of the Hall of Judgement, 
Weigh my heart aright and allow me to enter into the Kingdom of Osiris 
On the day of Judgement may I be maa-kheru, true of voice, righteous, and justified 
Open the gates of Heka 
And preserve me as I stand before the eternal gods. 

Vibrate:  ⲘⲈ!  ⲘⲈ!  ⲘⲈ! 

Introduction

Lately I’ve been devoting a lot of time to a contemplation of initiatory ontology. (Contemplating ontology is dangerous, I know!) To wit, when a person is initiated into the Golden Dawn current, how is that initiation effected? What cause is responsible for the successful transmission of that current and its activation in the individual? And perhaps most significantly, what lessons can this teach us about initiatory strategy within the Golden Dawn tradition?

Perspectives on Initiation

Traditionally, the conservative view is that the current is only transmissible by trained and qualified initiators who possess initiatory authority. This authority derives from the Order to which they belong, which in turn derives from an unbroken line of initiatory authority stretching back to the original Isis-Urania Temple warrant.

This is effectively the “apostolic succession” model of initiation. It may or may not admit the possibility of “astral initiation” at a distance, but the more conservative view generally eschews means of transmission that don’t involve the candidate undergoing the physical initiation ceremony. In this model, authority is central. The initiatic lineage is very important, because an unbroken chain of initiation is crucial to maintaining initiatory efficacy. The validity of the authority of the Isis-Urania Warrant, which has a questionable history, also becomes a central issue. There may also be further sources of authority, such as inner plane contacts (the “Secret Chiefs”), which can serve both to relieve the Warrant of some of its load-bearing burden and to muddy the waters of authority.

It is perhaps notable that this conservative view is almost invariably held by those who have the privilege of access to and membership in a traditional Order.

I find the conservative viewpoint problematic for a number of reasons which I could go into here, but since I’m in the process of laying out the perspectives themselves I’ll defer a response to any of these viewpoints until after they’ve all been put on display.

Israel Regardie believed that self-initiation into the Golden Dawn current was possible, leveraging the Opening by Watchtower, the Middle Pillar Ritual, and other ceremonies. As far as I have been able to discern, little has been said regarding the mechanism by which this strategy supposed to operate. Regardie did place a high degree of emphasis on the individual’s own persistence and work in the process, but little more has been said regarding the details than what has been related in this short paragraph.

Pat Zalewski also discards the idea that this sort of apostolic succession is necessary: “if you want to start up a G.D. temple then simply do it, the rest will come.” Unfortunately, Zalewski also says almost nothing about how initiation is then supposed to take place within this context. It’s the “Field of Dreams” approach to magical initiation: “If you build it, they will come.”

David Griffin represents the most staunchly conservative view on initiation, but his claims to millennia of grandiose lineage amount to little more than “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” hand-waving. I also don’t devote attention on this blog to alt-right fascist loonies with paranoid conspiracy delusions, so this is hopefully the last time Griffin’s name will come up in conversation, now or ever.

Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero are in a unique position. They run the largest traditional Order currently in existence (as far as I’m aware), and yet this Order itself was founded largely on the “Field of Dreams” approach. The Ciceros have also produced the first full curriculum devoted to Golden Dawn self-initiation. In the introduction to Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition, they explicitly state that “it is possible today for the student to become his/her own initiator”, but this seems to come with a number of caveats. “The effectiveness of an initiation ceremony depends almost entirely upon the initiator,” in their view, and this “is no less true of the self-initiator”. The training of an Adept in the traditional Order structure is mentioned at this juncture, with the conclusion that “the power to confer a successful initiation comes from either having had it awakened internally by another proficient initiator or, in the case of self-initiation, by undertaking a great deal of magical and meditative work.”

They go on to speak of the goal of initiation, which is “to bring about the illumination of the human soul by the Inner and Divine Light”; but little is said about how precisely this great deal of magical and meditative work is intended to effect the initiation itself in the self-initiate. “The seed that an initiation plants within the soul of the magician is a perpetual one that will remain intact throughout many different incarnations,” we are told, but how is this seed planted in the first place when the efficacy of an initiation depends on the work of the untrained self-initiate?

We are told that the “failure to achieve an initiation on whatever level in any given spiritual path or current is usually due to the unwillingness of the individual to sacrifice the petty needs and wants of the Lower Personality for that which is Higher” (emphasis my own), but we are given little insight into what constitutes initiatory success within the context of a self-initiatory operation.

We can, however, listen to what the Ciceros say about their decision to structure their course the way they did, and proceed to make inferences from there about what this structure says about the nature of their self-initiatory strategy. We are told in the introduction to the green brick that they revised the initiation ceremonies and created the expanded role of Themis/Maat/Thmê “as the Introducer and Mediator between the candidate and the other energies present during the initiation” as a strategy to address the problem of an untrained operator attempting to stand in for “a complex ceremony performed by a team of competent initiators” that is “traditionally executed only by someone who holds the rank of Adept”. In the Ciceros’ view, this ensures that “all advanced ritual gestures and techniques are carried out by the student only under the authority and dispensation of the Higher Self, not under the lower will or ego of the student”. The role of Themis/Maat/Thmê as mediator thus becomes sufficiently important that “prior to any self-initiation, a dialogue must be established between the student and the godform of Thmê in order to set up a conscious link between the candidate (as the Lower Personality) and the goddess of Truth (as the Higher Self)”, and this is achieved through a four month long series of preliminary meditations.

The Ciceros, then, appear to split the difference a bit when it comes to their view of what exactly is taking place in the initiatory context. When performed in a traditional Order setting, we can infer that the training and competency of the Hierophant can be trusted as fulfilling the necessary conditions for effective initiation. When pursuing self-initiation, we are told that the initiate has to undertake a great deal of magical/meditative work, but this statement is frankly relatively uninteresting from a technical standpoint: it tells us who is doing the work, but it doesn’t tell us anything about what the nature of that work is or how it is achieved.

We will unpack the Ciceros’ initiatory ontology more in short order; but in their own understanding of the situation, the Ciceros appear to place a high degree of emphasis on practical competency. Even with the mediation of the godform of Themis/Maat/Thmê, the student is encouraged to perform the initiation ceremonies more than once, as “proficiency will increase with practice, and proficiency is, after all, what will determine the effectiveness of the initiation”.

Lyam Thomas Christopher is the newest kid on the self-initiation block. His book has the eminently forgettable title Kabbalah, Magic and the Great Work of Self-Transformation, but it has garnered a large number of initiates under the heading of the “LTC” curriculum, and may indeed have eclipsed the Cicero curriculum in popularity since its debut. Curiously, LTC opines that prior to his own opus “a workable curriculum of the preliminary work of transformation has not yet been published in any adequate form” (p. 13), which raises some questions about his perspective on initiation in general. LTC chooses in his curriculum to dispense entirely with the initiation ceremonies as vehicles of initiation, instead replacing it with “a solitary daily formula of initiation” consisting of meditative exercises.

Unfortunately, LTC reveals little of the thought process that led him to structure his curriculum as he did–a tendency which especially plagues the curriculum at those points where it most sharply diverges from traditional Golden Dawn teaching and precedent. Here more so than with the Ciceros, we must examine and reverse engineer the practice to see what it says about the underlying ontological assumptions made therein. LTC does explicitly reject the idea that magical techniques “derive spiritual power from their lineage” (p. 35), however, and argues that his Kabbalistic technique “does a much better job” of facilitating the elemental initiations than the traditional initiation ceremonies do (p. 52).

Ballsy claims aside, LTC appears to advocate primarily for a “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” view of initiation, and for a holistic approach thereto. Because LTC substitutes a process for the usual ceremony-based method that supplies a discrete event of initiation, we have some difficulty placing his methods in dialogue with the other views and strategies outlined above. But in his view, “the secrets of transformation are limitation and perseverance” (p. 56, emphasis in original). Limitation comes in the form of making the Work one’s exclusive focus; and perseverance in the form of following that pursuit assiduously. LTC is therefore perhaps the greatest advocate of “salvation by works” among the voices here represented.

Evaluating the Perspectives

We have a range of viewpoints on initiation represented above, but these are relatively unhelpful to us without further unpacking. We’re trying to get at the truth of what initiation is and how it functions, and as we’ve seen most of the significant commentators have given us very little in the way of actual comment on this front. So we’re left in the rather unfortunate position of having to reverse engineer our way to actual ontology, and we’re going to have to sort out some baggage along the way.

The conservative view of initiation within the Golden Dawn tradition rests upon the success of more than a century of practice, but I find that it no longer holds currency when weighed against the evidence. The Ciceros released Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition back in 1995, which means we have had almost three decades of practical experience with at least one formal self-initiatory curriculum. This weight of SI practice, and the lived experiences of its students, must be attended to in any discussion of initiation going forward. LTC’s curriculum debuted in 2006, adding an entirely new dimension of practical data that we must take into consideration.

And the evidence, on the whole, is that self-initiation works. I have been walking the Golden Dawn path myself for the past 20 years, and in my time going through the Elemental grades and seeing others go through them in a traditional Order/Temple setting I have seen the current and its energies operate within people’s lives in relatively consistent and predictable ways. I have come to expect to see the current operating in those ways as a result, and to associate that functioning with a successful course of initiation. And indeed, I do in fact see the current working consistently and predictably in the lives of self-initiates. And it makes no difference whether those self-initiates follow the Cicero curriculum or the LTC curriculum: the current still flows, the energies still operate as expected. If we are to accept the validity of this evidence, the conservative ontology must be discarded.

The evidence also holds when it comes to the “Field of Dreams” strategy. Indeed I would say that every single Golden Dawn order in existence today provides ample proof that the current springs to life in those who build a home for it. But “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t really tell us what it is, or how exactly to build it apart from merely copying that which has come before; and it certainly doesn’t tell us why it works. The greatest ontological value, then, can (and must) be mined out of that crucible of experimental strategy and experiential data represented in self-initiatory work, and in holding that data up against the light of established and trusted precedent.

And here we must turn back to the Ciceros and LTC. Given that LTC spends relatively little breath expounding on the philosophy undergirding his curriculum, and turns away from a ceremonial or event-driven initiation in favor of a process-based one, I find that the value LTC adds to the consideration is primarily that of challenging previously held assumptions. In other words, the question implicit in my reading of LTC is “how far can the Golden Dawn current be stretched without breaking?” And the answer, as it turns out, is a lot farther than I personally would have expected. This is highly valuable when it comes to evaluating some of the ontological claims that have been made and seeing whether they hold water.

So let’s revisit some of the perspective of the Ciceros, who are kind enough to actually give us a window into their philosophy beyond the mere methodology, and see what we can tease out.

The Ciceros assert that the effectiveness of any given initiation is almost entirely dependent upon the initiator, and that the power to confer initiation (at least in the way this normally operates within an Order setting) derives from the initiator having themself received that seed of initiation. The actual conferral of that initiation also benefits from (if not outright requires) the initiator having received ritual training that renders them competent to perform the requisite ceremonies.

At the same time, we are told that the self-initiate can achieve these same ends, given sufficient magical and meditative work. We can infer that a significant amount of this work is necessary because it increases proficiency, which is equated with initiatory efficacy.

We are also told that initiatory failure is often the result of an unwillingness to sacrifice the needs and wants of the Lower Personality in favor of the Higher Self; but while this details a common failure mode of initiation, it does not serve to clue us in as to what the necessary and sufficient conditions for initiatory success are. To arrive at these, we must still fill in some blanks.

We can begin filling in those blanks by turning to some other sources for the Ciceros’ thought on the subject. The Essential Golden Dawn states that effecting “a psycho-spiritual change in the awareness of the candidate” requires the ritual officers to “use the techniques and laws of magic–symbols and correspondences, manipulation of the Astral Light, and the faculties of willpower, visualization, and imagination–to give the ceremony its magical potency”; and because initiation requires that “certain magical forces be activated within the candidate’s sphere of sensation”, it is especially important that the Hierophant “in whom these forces have been previously activated” and “who is primarily responsible for the proper transmission of these magical energies into the candidate’s aura” be competently trained (pp. 109-110).

We further find in The Essential Golden Dawn a division between the two types of initiation, astral and physical. The former is the spiritual transformation which “takes place on the ethereal planes” and may not be recognized by the individual at the time, whereas the latter is the outward physical ceremony that “grounds the energies of the astral initiation” and “reaffirms the candidate’s spiritual will” through submission to the ceremony (p. 229). The astral initiation is “not obtained through other human beings”, but “is granted to a person directly by the spiritual archetypes within the psyche” (ibid.). One wonders what the Ciceros would make of the LTC curriculum, which retains the astral initiation while dispensing with the physical.

The Ciceros further quote Dion Fortune regarding the source of true initiation: “We cannot remind our readers too often that the Great Initiator comes in the Silence to the higher consciousness, and is never a human being, however supernatural and secluded. All that can be done by the Servants of the Masters on the physical plane is the preparation of the candidate” (p. 233).

Drawing together these disparate threads then, we can see a set of propositions begins to emerge.

1. There are two types of initiation, astral and physical.
2. The astral initiation is a spiritual transformation which is imparted through non-human agency.
3. The physical initiation consists of the preparation of the candidate to receive the true spiritual initiation.
4. The effectiveness of this physical initiation is hugely dependent upon the competency and proficiency of the initiator.
5. This initiation requires that magical forces be activated within the candidate’s sphere of sensation, which entails the use of symbols and correspondences, manipulation of the Astral Light, and the use of Will and the magical imagination.
6. We can therefore infer that the competency and proficiency regarded as necessary on the part of the initiator has largely to do with the correct use of the above techniques.
7. It is important, or at least beneficial, that the initiator has had these forces previously activated within their own sphere of sensation, rather than having a merely academic understanding thereof.
8. In the case of self-initiation, magical and meditative work can be a sufficient substitute for having the forces previously awakened within oneself.

We can go on to infer that the nature of the magical and meditative work required for the self-initiate to achieve an effective initiation has primarily to do with obtaining an operant level of conversancy with (rather than a deep understanding of) the techniques necessary to prepare them to receive the true and spiritual initiation.

Regarding the success of initiation, the Ciceros write in The Essential Golden Dawn that “if the entire initiatory process is successful, the candidate will have been given an infusion of divine energy, in the hope that he or she will indeed attain the increased awareness that is needed to exalt the soul and achieve the completion of the Great Work” (p. 110).

And indeed, it seems that in the final analysis, no matter how much is made of the proficiency of the initiator or of their capabilities, the heavy lifting of initiation comes down to the receiving of divine energy. We have seen the assertion that the most common reason for the failure of an initiation is the refusal to submit the Lower Personality to the Higher Self, and this effectively cuts the individual off from the ability to receive that divine influx of energy. Conversely, it is enlightening to note the specific ways in which the Ciceros departed from traditional Golden Dawn teaching and ritual work in implementing their self-initiatory strategy. The key difference between the Ciceros’ self-initiation ceremonies and the original ceremonies of the Golden Dawn is the introduction of a divine patron in the form of Themis/Maat/Thmê, and a preliminary series of meditations to establish contact with this patron prior to attempting the physical initiation.

In other words, while a trained Hierophant may have an easier time performing an initiation for someone else than that individual is likely to have performing an initiation for themself, the primary differentiator of the Ciceros’ self-initiation strategy from their Temple initiation strategy is that the former relies more heavily on divine petitions and patronage. The candidate must do the work of proceeding through the ceremonies and of making themselves a suitable vessel to receive the initiation, but the initiation itself is directly conferred by the Divine.

Toward an Ontology of Initiation

Now that we’re starting to zero in on the nature of initiation and wrap our heads around it, we start to see a few themes emerging. With a bit more massaging, we may finally arrive at somewhat of a cobbled-together ontology for what initiation is and how it functions.

We can state that true initiation is fundamentally bipartite, involving a divine/spiritual component which does not rely on human agency and a physical (a better word may be “individual”) component which depends on human agency and effort. Spiritual initiations may occur spontaneously or without human action, but in the Golden Dawn tradition the purpose of the physical initiation is to prepare the candidate to receive the spiritual initiation and to catalyze it into action. The ability to effect that preparation and catalysis successfully is dependent upon the proficiency of the initiator in leveraging the magical techniques used within this process. An initiator who has successfully received this same initiation will presumably find it easier to confer it upon others, but as self-initiation is possible it is ipso facto evident that this is not strictly necessary. If the initiation is successful, the candidate receives an influx of divine energy and the spiritual seed is planted within their sphere of sensation, hopefully to take root and thrive. This is not guaranteed, however, as it is necessary for the initiate to submit the Lower Personality to the Higher Self, and the refusal to do so appears to be the primary reason that otherwise apparently successful initiations will fail as this undercuts the spiritual initiation itself, rather than the physical one.

We have also seen that self-initiation is possible, but that it involves some different considerations than traditional initiation. The spiritual initiation must still take place, and must still be catalyzed into life within the individual. This entails gaining proficiency in the techniques used for such a catalysis, whether those techniques involve dramatic ritual (as in the Cicero curriculum) or primarily meditative work (as in the LTC curriculum).

The crux of the physical initiation (or individual initiation, to use my term above) is rendering the person of the candidate a fit vessel to receive the influx of divine energy. In traditional ceremonial initiation this is done via a combination of techniques, including direct manipulation of the sphere of sensation and direct conveyance of the Astral Light. But this is not the only avenue available, and indeed this concept of rendering the candidate a fit vessel finds purchase in Hermetic thought and practice stretching back well before the Golden Dawn.

Marsilio Ficino used methods that are conceptually similar to the above in the creation and use of planetary talismans. The use of the vis imaginativa or imaginal faculty was essential to the working (for more on which see Hanegraaff’s Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination), but so was a whole host of physical senses including speech, incense, music, and other stimuli which bear correspondences with the forces being telestically invoked. And bear in mind that the Neophyte Ceremony–and indeed all of the initiation ceremonies–are fundamentally talismanic operations which treat the candidate as the material basis and the Higher Self as the talismanic “payload”. Similarly, and for this reason, the Z.2 Formula for the creation of talismans makes use of the same ceremonial rubric (“the Ritual of the Enterer”) as the Neophyte Ceremony itself.

We can also go back much further than Ficino, to the Neoplatonic idea of suitability or ἐπιτηδειότης. Regarding this term, Gregory Shaw explains that the soul of the operator is gradually purified to render it fit or suitable to receive the manifestation of the gods, in a manner similar to the way in which wood is dried to render it more suitable to catch fire (Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, p. 86).

Thus we have two separate things occurring within an initiation, whether that initiation is a traditional ceremony or a process of meditative induction. The first is the “rendering suitable” of the candidate to receive divine energy; the second is the actual reception of that energy. The first is our reaching out to the universe and the gods; the second is their reaching back.

In traditional initiation ceremonies, the candidate is rendered ἐπιτήδειος or suitable through a variety of methods. These are largely unchanged in the Cicero SI methodology, though the candidate must develop the technical proficiency to leverage them while still remaining in a psychically receptive state–a task that is easier said than done when you’re all up in your head because you’re trying to juggle a script and implements and figure out what you’re doing in the first place. Additionally, the Ciceros prescribe a course of general preliminary meditative work (in addition to the Themis/Maat/Thmê cycle) to help the student build the vis imaginativa or imaginative power that is necessary to animate the magical operation. In the LTC methodology, the candidate is rendered suitable through the process of ritual and meditative work since the initiatory strategy does not rely on an initiation ceremony to do the heavy lifting. Indeed, LTC speaks to this process when he states, “The work of becoming an enlightened being requires more than the influx of spiritual Light. The physical, mental, intuitive, and instinctive aspects of the mind must be prepared for that influx” (pp. 51-52).

On the second front, the reception of divine energy, traditional Golden Dawn initiation ceremonies seek to catalyze this influx with various techniques at certain critical points within the ceremonies. In the Neophyte Ceremony, the Hegemon speaks for the Higher Self of the candidate, as its terrestrial representative; and the Hierophant serves as a channel for the Astral Light and directs it into the candidate. This operation has a critical point when the candidate recites the Neophyte Obligation, but reaches its climactic moment when the Hierophant descends from the Throne of the East and advances between the Pillars along the Path of Samekh, bringing the Light from beyond the Veil into the Ruach of the candidate.

In self-initiatory routes, this is not directly possible; so another course of action must be taken. The Cicero strategy involves the expanded role of Themis/Maat/Thmê as the representative of the Higher Self to which the candidate is striving to connect, and changes the verbiage of the ceremony such that the speeches of the officers become in effect intercessory prayers to the divine. We are not given any real insight into LTC’s strategy on this front, and in the absence of other artifacts we can refer back to my previous statement that LTC appears to be the greatest proponent of “salvation by works” among the perspectives represented. It appears that LTC simply has the student do the work, and trusts that the necessary divine initiation will follow from there. Curiously enough, this seems to be the case as borne out in the experience of LTC curriculum students.

In the end, however, the divine initiation is the prerogative of the divine. We can reach out to the universe, but the universe must also reach back to us in order to close the circuit and make those initiatory energies operant. Therefore regardless of what strategy one takes to effecting initiation, we must engage with that strategy from a place of faith and anticipate that the true and spiritual initiation will be granted to us by divine grace. We can prepare the way, we can do the Work, and we can call upon the divine–but when it comes to this component of initiation, we can but make ourselves fit vessels for the divine to inhabit and trust that it will oblige.