Egyptian Reference Materials for the Golden Dawn
I have been having a difficult time figuring out which texts on Egypt, Egyptian religion or mythology, or Egyptology in general that the founders of the Golden Dawn, Westcott and Mathers, would have had available to them.
For the Kabbalistic material, it is relatively straightforward with Ginsberg, Franck, Levi’s work, and a few others along with the translations and publications that both Westcott and Mathers did. The same goes for Rosicrucian influences. Given Westcott’s background and his writings within the SRIA and otherwise, as well as his library, I know that he had fair access to both Plato and Neoplatonic works.
I can’t seem to find any solid references through quotations, mentions, or even library holdings of any Egyptian texts. Yet, with all of that, there is clearly a lot of Egyptian material added to the Golden Dawn. We also know from Waite’s description of meeting Mathers on an occasion in the latter’s youth at the British Museum, that Mathers studies the Egyptian materials there.
I need to try to figure out this stuff a bit since I have a chapter or two on the disparate strands of thought that went into the original Golden Dawn’s rituals, papers, and practices.
January 31st, 2007 at 3:12 am
I know Flo Farr wrote a book on the Bruce Codex & another whose name escapes me…iirc, hers was a pretty earlyu entry onn the subject..
In any case, rumor has it that Budge worked the Egyptian dept. for the British museum just around the corner from the London temple & may have helped out here and there.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:04 am
Yes, I’ve heard the rumors about Budge before. He isn’t recorded on any membership rolls so if he helped anyone, it was as a friend as the rolls are pretty complete, especially since multiple initiations are recorded, etc.
His book came out in 1895, seven years after the GD was founded and, I believe, three years after the second order was created.
I’ll have to double-check the dates on Farr’s book but even that wouldn’t explain what Mathers and Westcott were deriving their Egyptian elements from…
January 31st, 2007 at 11:34 am
No, but I thought it might be a clue. In any case, the geographical proximity to the museum can’t be complete coincidence?
Iirc, the magic book came out 1896, and the Hathor book preceded it by a year. :-)
January 31st, 2007 at 11:42 am
Oh, we know it isn’t a coincidence. Mathers was well known in the 1880s for being in the British Museum. Waite wrote an amusing story about meeting him there and gathering, from what Mathers stated, that Mathers was looking at Egyptian materials there.
It’s just very hard to nail down sources for Golden Dawn ideas of Egyptian beliefs (specifically on the soul) based on that. For other areas, we know what texts were available and often which ones were owned by them or quoted by them in other things they wrote.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Thought- you could try the librarian at the Rosicrucian museum- they have a lot of unpublished ephemera, out of print stuff.
January 31st, 2007 at 5:01 pm
That’s why I’m not sure there were books, even…there couldn’t have been many on the subject at that point, could there?
January 31st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I’ve been directed today towards Christian Bunsen’s “Egypt’s Place in Universal History” which contained “The Book of the Dead” and Goodwin’s “Fragment of a Graeco-Egyptian Work on Magic from a Papyrus in the British Museum” as sources from a couple of decades before the Golden Dawn.
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Are those going to be difficult to find? Sounds like work.