INTRODU CTION
feet Happiness',8 there does not seem to have been much teach ing of magical practice (as distinct from magical theory) until i892 when a new grade (Adeptus Minor) and a Second Order (Roseae et Aureae Crucis) were established. Both the ritual-based on the legend of the mediaeval adept named Christian Rosycross-of the Adeptus Minor grade and the magical techniques taught to its members were derived from MacGregor Mathers, who had allegedly obtained the former from a continental adept, named Frater Lux e Tenebres, and the latter from the 'Secret Chiefs of the Order', superhuman beings of the same type as the Masters who were supposed to have given Madame Blavatsky her mission. Mathers has left his own description of how these new teachings were received; a brief extract reads as follows : Almost the whole of the Second Order Knowledge has been obtained by me from them in various ways, by clairvoyance . . . by astral projection on their part or mine . . . by the table, by the ring and disk . . . at times by Direct Voice audible to my external ears . . . at times copied from books brought before me I know not how at times by an appointment 9 astrally at a certain place • . .
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For some years all went well with the Golden Dawn and much magical work was done, but in course of time personality clashes and other factors-I have told the story in full elsewhere-led to quarrels, revolts and schisms. By i903 the Order was split into various warring schisms. Some of these worked the Golden Dawn system in its entirety, others, such as the group led by A. E. Waite and M. W. Blackden, threw the magical tradition overboard, rewrote the rituals to suit their own prejudices, and took refuge in an exclusively Christian mysticism. Still another 8 From the Order's official history lecture, reprinted in full as an appendix to my Ritual Magic in England. 9 The 'ring and disk' referred to are the mediaeval equivalents of the ouija board and of the pendulum used in modem radiesthesia. The 'table' referred to is a table of letter-part of the Enochian magical system. The full text of Mathers' 1896 manifesto to the Second Order, from which the above extract is taken, may be found in my Ritual Magic in England.
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