Tree of Life diagram in Portal Ritual

Ross G Caldwell

For Florence Farr, the Nietzchean concept of Superman (too which we might designate his 'ego ipsissimus'?) is a state of conciousness, one which she describes as 'essentially feminine'.

Thanks Steve. Can you source that for me?

I don't see Westcott or Mathers reading Nietzsche, but I don't know enough. I don't believe Mathers knew German, and was Nietzsche translated yet?

I'm not sure Nietzsche is a strong possibility. Westcott used Rittangelus' bilingual edition of the Sefer Jezirah for his translation, and Rittangelus uses "ipsissima" quite profusely in his commentary on Kether, the Unity, Deity, Being, etc. Never as a stand-alone title, though (that I can find). I'll gather the quotes if you like.

Another proximate source, in literature, is Eugene Lee-Hamilton's poem "Ipsissimus", published in 1884.
http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/ipsissimus

Here is the first edition; go to page 108 -
https://archive.org/details/cu31924013515477

It is a sad poem though, not the kind of thing that would inspire the highest aspiration.
 

kwaw

Thanks Steve. Can you source that for me?

Florence Farr, ‘Superman Consciousness’ (a review of A. R.Orage, Consciouness: Animal, Human and Superman [London and Benares: Theosopical Publishing Society, 1907], the New Age, June 6th, 1907, p.92.

“...the state of consciousness, now identified by leading modern thinkers as the state called superman, is mystically feminine’.

I don't believe Mathers knew German, and was Nietzsche translated yet?

Quote:

The New Age championed the work of both Friedrich Nietzche and Henri Bergson, and Orage saw their ideas as crucial to an enlightened understanding of the “consciousness of Being”. In particular, and in common with certain points with Yeats, he regarded Nietzche as an inspired mysic. Early translation of significant works by Nietzche, and the appearance in 1898 of The Eagle and the Serpent, a short-lived periodical dedicated to an “egoistic philosophy”, had helped to indtroduce a small British readership to central Nietzchean preoccupations.

The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern by Alex Owen, p.133

See here, from p.133 on:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...Rn#v=onepage&q=Florence Farr Superman&f=false

Which goes on to make mention of the similarity of some Nietzchean concepts to those among some of the members of the second order of the GD.

Possibly the Mathers would have been introduced at an early date to the ideas of Nietzche through their relationship with Bergson? Yeats too met Bergson at least once, in Paris when he was visiting the Mathers in 1894, but he didn't begin reading Nietsche until 1902, with 'such fascination that he strained his eyes".
 

Aeon418

Paul Foster Case calls 10=1 Ipsissimus in his 1927 The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, chapter XXI. Would he have just borrowed it from Crowley? I find that difficult to believe.
Case was an avid student of The Equinox. I think it's probable (or even highly likely) that he 'lifted' the term from there. He borrowed and adapted other things, so why not Ipsissimus?
 

kwaw

Case was an avid student of The Equinox. I think it's probable (or even highly likely) that he 'lifted' the term from there. He borrowed and adapted other things, so why not Ipsissimus?

He was also a member of the Alpha & Omega (Mathers) off-shoot of the GD, so could have as easily have got it from there.
 

kwaw

Florence Farr, ‘Superman Consciousness’ (a review of A. R.Orage, Consciouness: Animal, Human and Superman [London and Benares: Theosopical Publishing Society, 1907], the New Age, June 6th, 1907, p.92.

img code is off for this forum, and I can't post attachments, so here is a jpg picture of her article in my photobucket here:

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t212/kwaw/FarrOrage_zpsckklxhsh.jpg

In the argot of Roman slaves, the slave's master was called 'ipsissimus'. Would that be akin to Farr's 'Lord of our prison house'?
 

Ross G Caldwell

Case was an avid student of The Equinox. I think it's probable (or even highly likely) that he 'lifted' the term from there. He borrowed and adapted other things, so why not Ipsissimus?

That possibility cannot be easily dismissed, since Case is writing decades after Crowley first published the name of the grade in both 777, col. CXXI, and The Equinox, I,2, p. 243 (diagram of Paths and Grades).

But Case, like Crowley in 777, keeps the grade Theoricus for 2=9, so he is not basing himself on the A.'.A.'. scheme. If he regarded Crowley's revelation of the name for 10=1 as authoritative, it is the GD Crowley he is relying on, not the A.'.A.'. Crowley. So at the very least, he believed it was the authentic GD or Roscrucian tradition, and not an innovation.

So I don't know if I agree that it is highly likely that Case merely went by Crowley's authority on this point.
 

Aeon418

But Case, like Crowley in 777, keeps the grade Theoricus for 2=9, so he is not basing himself on the A.'.A.'. scheme. If he regarded Crowley's revelation of the name for 10=1 as authoritative, it is the GD Crowley he is relying on, not the A.'.A.'. Crowley. So at the very least, he believed it was the authentic GD or Roscrucian tradition, and not an innovation.
I not convinced it's as clear cut as that. During the early A.'.A.'. period and on into The Equinox phase, Crowley was not always consistent in how he used the grades. It's almost as if that time was a transition stage in which he wavered back and forth between the old and familiar Golden Dawn grade structure (which is mostly Assiah work bridging to Yetzirah), and the new A.'.A.'. grade structure (which is mostly Yetzirah work bridging to Briah and beyond).

In some places Crowley uses the Golden Dawn grades to indicate formal or "outer initiation", and the A.'.A.'. grades to indicate real or "inner initiation." The diary extract, John St. John, is a good example. The work described in that document is Crowley's work for Adeptus Major 6=5. But early on he says that he had already attained 6=5 many years before, but only in the "natural" sense.

Then there's the strange incident in 1906 when Crowley and G.C. Jones claim they were both admitted to the grade of 8=3 after enacting parts of the Golden Dawn 5=6 ceremony. 8=3 in 1906? :confused: (Although Crowley claimed that he demurred and felt unworthy of the grade.)
Actually that might be true, but only in the Golden Dawn sense, and also because Mathers screwed up the Golden Dawn grade structure.

In the Golden Dawn that Crowley knew one was supposed to rework the previous grades, on a different level, upon attainment of Adeptship. Thus you were meant to have Zelator-Adeptus Minor, Theoricus-Adeptus Minor, Practicus-Adeptus Minor, Philosophus-Adeptus Minor, and Adeptus-Adeptus Minor. (In terms of 'actual' attainment, the last grade would theoretically have linked up with Crowley's A.'.A.'. 5=6.) But this never happened. Mathers wrote the curriculum for Zelator-Adeptus Minor and some of the Theoricus-Adeptus Minor work, but the rest is little more than an outline sketch at best! Instead Mathers selected four Golden Dawn inner order members (One was his wife and another his chief patron. No bias there then! :rolleyes:) and put them through his new 6=5 and 7=4 ceremonies. :confused:

So when Crowley and Jones claimed admittance to the 8=3 grade, they can only have meant it in the Golden Dawn sense. Because the Golden Dawn Adeptus-Adeptus Minor grade did not exist (equivalent to A.'.A.'. 5=6, K&C of HGA), they presumed it to be 8=3 in the Golden Dawn grade structure that they understood at that time. And this is despite the fact that the supernal grades were considered off limits within the original Golden Dawn!
 

Ross G Caldwell

Crowley’s understanding of his own progress in the Order is interesting, but the question is whether he invented the term Ipsissimus for 10=1 or not. One way to judge the plausibility of Pasi’s assertion is to look at how other Rosicrucian or Golden Dawn orders have taken it without question. If Crowley is indeed the inventor of the term, then his influence on all subsequent such orders is extremely profound, even on those very hostile to him, and which view him as a fraud and charlatan, who certainly never attained the Grade he himself named.

I find Pasi’s notion, essentially an argument from silence, dubious because of this, among other things.
(the strength of arguments from silence or "absence of evidence is evidence of absence", rests on whether we have reason to think there should be evidence (references), and there is not, or whether there is enough evidence overall to say with a high degree of confidence that the absence of evidence in a particular case is evidence of its absence. In this case, Crowley appears to be merely the first to put it in print; there is no evidence that he invented it, he never claims to, and there is good reason to think that the secrecy that shrouded the Third Order explains the absence of evidence for the term before 1909 (like the term "A.'.A.'." before 1906))

I don’t know much about Case, so I’ve had to look around. In his attitude to Crowley, Paul Foster Case is not completely dismissive or overtly hostile. See his article, “To Our Members”, first published in the Wheel of Life, autumn equinox, 1936:

We would not recommend Aleister Crowley as a guide in practical occultism. Yet his book 777 is the finest thing of its kind.
http://www.bota.org/assets/2007/12/15/portico-7-1.pdf

Case was never a member of the Stella Matutina, that I can find. He was, however, a very active member of the Thoth-Hermes Temple of the Alpha et Omega in Chicago. This was Mathers’ group, of course. Case joined in 1918, and in May 1920 took his 5=6. He became Praemonstrator of the Temple in February, 1921, and resigned simultaneous to being expelled by Moina Mathers in December, 1921. As a Second Order member, and Praemonstrator, Case probably had access to all the written information there was about Alpha et Omega; other information might have come from Brodie-Innes, the head of the Order after MacGregor Mathers died, and Moina before the expulsion, with both of whom Case was in correspondence. So, while he knew Crowley’s writings, he also knew the old GD through Mathers and the Alpha et Omega.

This information comes from, among other places which tell the story, Lee Moffitt, in his convenient “Case timeline” (1997). Moffitt also provides a few bits of information about Case’s knowledge of Crowley:
http://kcbventures.com/pfc/documents/timeline.pdf

1926-1927: Case

“… reconstructed A.’.O .’. rituals from a combination of his memory and a copy of the Equinox”.

Moffitt’s single source for this (10) is a “Private communication, An anonymous source”, but this source’s reliability is not sure, since in the same timeline at the end, under “Other Items”, Moffitt cites the Anonymous private communication for the information that Case was initiated to third degree OTO by Crowley himself, “probably early 1917 to mid-1918”, but resigned later out of “dissatisfaction.”

This appears to be unsubstantiated rumour, from what I can find. Martin Starr, in The Unknown God, writes of Case’s involvement with C.S. Jones and the “Universal Brotherhood” (U.B.; see pp. 116-118), but makes no mention of any O.T.O. association.

For the O.T.O. connecton, Moffitt also cites the “HOGD Biography page” for Paul Foster Case. I can’t find this HOGD page; it is an old reference, perhaps long dead – but there is nothing about Case’s putative membership in the O.T.O. on this other (same?) “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” biography page –
http://www.golden-dawn.com/eu/displaycontent.aspx?pageid=160-biography-paul-foster-case

To sum up, Case kept the old GD Grade system, which he believed to be extremely ancient. He did not follow the A.’.A.’. Golden Dawn grades, which suppressed Theoricus at least by March, 1910 (in Liber XIII). If he did not know the name of 10=1 from his three-year happy association with Alpha et Omega, or subsequent correspondence with people who knew more than he did, he could indeed have taken it from 777, column CXXI, or from the “Diagram of the Paths and Grades” in Equinox I,2, p. 243. But I stand by what I said earlier – he believed it was the correct, ancient Rosicrucian name for this Grade, and had no reason to believe it was Crowley’s invention, even if the only place he ever saw it named was in Crowley.
 

Ross G Caldwell

I'm liking the Nietzsche angle, by the way (thanks Steve) - and in the meantime, until we get to the bottom of this.

The connection is fuzzy now, I can't clinch it, but the GD's promise of "becoming more than human", and the Theosophical connection (Westcott in particular, in the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical society and a close associate of Blavatsky, but Mathers also deeply involved with Theosophy), with many Theosophists interested in Nietzsche and of course evolving consciousness... I think there might, very probably, be something there.

I apologize for the speculative tone, but I'm hoping it might inspire others to begin looking in the obscure direction of Nietzsche's influence on people like Westcott and Mathers.
 

Ross G Caldwell

There is a diagram of the Minutum Mundum from the Library & Museum of Freemasonry that was on display in December, 2013. It looks old, and it lists all the Grades including Ipsissimus for Kether.

I found it from the link in the first post on this thread, "Golden Dawn Exhibit in London" -
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=208535

The image is small, but when it is resolved at 300dpi more detail can be seen -Binah has "Magister Templi" beside it, Chokmah has "Magus", and curved underneath Kether is what can only be "Ipsissimus".

I have uploaded a 300dpi version of the Supernal Grades here -
http://www.rosscaldwell.com/crowley/goldendawn/highgrades.jpg

The museum dates it to circa 1900, in an unknown hand. See item number 42 of the catalogue at this link, type "Golden Dawn" in the search bar -
http://www.freemasonry.london.museum/catalogue.php

It is listed as "Diagram of the Tree of Life".

Here is the link to the original blog post -

Minutum Mundum, from the Library & Museum of Freemasonry collection, for the Golden Dawn Exhibition, 19th December 2013, at the United Grand Lodge of England, Great Queen Street (in the Grand Officers’ Robing Room)
http://solascendans.com/2013/12/20/golden-dawn-exhibition-19th-december-2013/