Book of Thoth Study Group #5: Initiated Tradition - Tarot in the Cipher Manuscripts

Zephyros

The Evidence for the Initiated Tradition: Tarot in the Cipher Manuscripts

2. The Tarot in the Cipher Manuscripts
At the time of the French Renaissance of the eighteen-fifties, a similar movement took place in England. Its interest centered in ancient religions, and their traditions of initiation and thaumaturgy. Learned societies, some secret or semi-secret, were founded or revived. Among the members of one such group, the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Freemasonry, were three men: one, Dr. Wynn Westcott, a London coroner; a Dr. Woodford, and a Dr. Woodman. There is a little dispute as to which of these men went to the Farringdon Road, or whether it was the Farringdon Road to which they went; but there is no doubt whatever that one of them bought an old book, either from an obscure bookseller, or off a barrow, or found it in a library. This happened about 1884 or 1885. There is no dispute that in this book were some loose papers; that these papers turned out to be written in cipher; that these cipher manuscripts contained the material for the foundation of a secret society purporting to confer initiation by means of ritual; and that among these manuscripts was an attribution of the trumps of the Tarot to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. When this matter is examined, it becomes quite clear that Levi’s wrong attribution of the letters was deliberate; that he knew the right attribution, and considered it his duty to conceal it. (It made much trouble for him to camouflage his chapters!)

The cipher manuscripts were alleged to date from the earliest years of the nineteenth century; and there is a note to one page which seems to be in the writing of Eliphas Levi. It appears extremely probable that he had access to this manuscript on his visit to Bulwer Lytton, in England. In any case, as previously observed, Levi shows constantly that he knew the correct attributions (with the exception, of course, of Tzaddi---why, will be seen later) and tried to use them, without improperly revealing any secrets which he was sworn not to disclose.

As soon as one possesses the true attributions of these trumps, the Tarot leaps into life. One is intellectually knocked down by the rightness of it. All the difficulties created by the traditional attributions as understood by the ordinary scholar, disappear in a flash. For this reason, one is inclined to credit the claim for the promulgators of the cipher manuscript, that they were guardians of a tradition of Truth.
 

Zephyros

As soon as one possesses the true attributions of these trumps, the Tarot leaps into life. One is intellectually knocked down by the rightness of it. All the difficulties created by the traditional attributions as understood by the ordinary scholar, disappear in a flash. For this reason, one is inclined to credit the claim for the promulgators of the cipher manuscript, that they were guardians of a tradition of Truth.

I have to agree, at least in the sense that Tarot, especially the Thoth, only really "leaped into life" once I started to study Qabalah and its structure pertaining to Tarot. The Tree of Life is like a purring machine, it just works.
 

Aeon418

A transcription and translation of the Cipher Manuscripts.

http://hermetic.com/gdlibrary/cipher/

Each translated folio page contains a link (The Cipher MS) at the bottom that takes you to a transcription of the cipher code.
 

Ross G Caldwell

From various of his statements, it is clear that Crowley never saw the Cipher manuscript. Of course, like everybody else up to before 1978 (the date of Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn), he also had a very foggy idea of its history.

For instance, in Confessions, p. 175, he can only relate second-hand knowledge of the nature of the cipher it was encoded in:

“Some time in the ‘seventies or ‘eighties, a cipher manuscript was found on a bookstall by a Dr Woodman, a colleague in magical study of Dr W. Wynn Westcott. It was beyond their powers to decipher it, though Mrs Emery (Miss Florence Farr) told me that a child could have done so.

So we learn that Crowley had to be informed that the cipher was childishly simple; he could not say so at first hand that (or whether indeed) it was. We also learn that Florence Farr, who joined the Order in 1890, had in fact seen it.

As late as July, 1908, when the fledgling A.’.A.’. was just starting, Crowley, then in Paris, wrote to Westcott in London demanding to be given access to the manuscript or information as to where it was:

“Dear Sir and Brother,…
“You are in possession (or rather in charge) of the cipher MSS. on which the orders of R.R. et A.C. and G.D. were founded.
“The guardianship of the honour of initiates has passed into my hands, and I am determined to vindicate it, and justify the confidence which has been placed in me, whatever the cost to myself or to others.
“I therefore demand that you should make a clear statement of fact as to how the MSS. came into your hands, and the MSS. themselves, prefaced by such statement, should be deposited with the Trustees of the British Museum. Or, if you have parted with them, that you should inform me how and when; and to whom you have entrusted them.

(entire letter quoted in R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn Scrapbook (1997), pp. 89-90)

Westcott made no response and apparently never corresponded with Crowley. He had indeed kept the manuscripts, and took them with him to South Africa in 1918 (he died in 1925). In 1923, someone only known in all the sources I have checked so far as a “Private Collector” acquired them, and they stayed with the family until Howe was permitted a copy in 1972 as part of his research (although he did not publish them in facsimile or transcription), and from his copy other copies were made. These copies were published in facsimile a couple of times in very small editions, and finally in 1996 and 1997 two publications of the full facsimile with transcriptions and commentaries were published (Darcy Küntz, The Complete Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript; Carroll Poke Runyon, Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript; the above information on the fate of the manuscript is summarized from Runyon, p. 34).

It is important to remember that Westcott had resigned from all official involvement with the Golden Dawn in August, 1897, more than a year before Crowley was initiated, so he was never involved with Crowley’s magical training. Westcott claims he only ever saw him once, probably in early 1900:

“Dear Dr. (Berridge),
“A man named Crowley keeps writing me for information re G.D. which I refuse. I know nothing of him, except that I once saw him about seven years ago. Was he initiated to G. D. in Isis Temple, or after the split?”

(from a letter of October 27, 1908, quoted in Gilbert op. cit. p. 91)

One handwritten copy of the original is known, made by the Reverend William Alexander Ayton (1816-1908), praobably before 1900, since Ayton was part of the faction that expelled Mathers that April, and his solicitation for Westcott’s support in this was rebuffed, as he remained a passive supporter of Mathers’ leadership. Westcott guarded the documents jealously, as he did the Anna Sprengel letters.

Ayton’s clean and legible copy is quite a contrast, but otherwise identical, to the original’s cramped and hurried style. A. E. Waite published a page of this copy – upside-down and backwards – in his 1924 book The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, plate facing page 583.

For a comparison of this page of the original with Ayton’s copy (reoriented from Waite), see –
http://www.rosscaldwell.com/crowley/goldendawn/cipher8comparison.jpg
 

Aeon418

From various of his statements, it is clear that Crowley never saw the Cipher manuscript.
I wonder if Crowley gained his "second hand" knowledge of the Cipher MS from George Cecil Jones or Allen Bennett? Given Crowley's close relationship with both men, it's almost a certainty that he would have questioned either or both of them on the subject. But would either of them have had access to the MS?
 

Ross G Caldwell

I wonder if Crowley gained his "second hand" knowledge of the Cipher MS from George Cecil Jones or Allen Bennett? Given Crowley's close relationship with both men, it's almost a certainty that he would have questioned either or both of them on the subject. But would either of them have had access to the MS?

I imagine he gained his knowledge of the history of the Order, and the stories of its founding, from as many people as he could. A better source than either G. C. Jones or Bennett, both of whom admittedly must have known and worked with Westcott in Isis-Urania, was Mathers himself, whom Crowley knew well and fiercely defended in 1899-1900. He even met him again in Paris in 1902-1903, on his return from his first voyage around the world. Crowley surely learned a lot, and heard a lot of stories, from Mathers. If anybody to whom Crowley had access had a copy of the Cipher manuscript, Mathers would have.

But I think, in 1908, Crowley wanted to study the original document, even if he had seen a copy. What makes me wonder if he had even seen a copy is his statement that Florence Farr told him that it was a simple cipher; if he had seen it himself, he would have said so in his own judgement, on his own authority. But he could only report what someone else had said of it.

I don't think many members saw it, especially after Westcott retired from active participation in GD matters. The information contained in it was all presented in the rituals and knowledge lectures of the GD grades in any case; the Cipher mansucript only had historical importance. Crowley wanted to study them for himself, to see whether he could trust in their authenticity.

In his letter to Westcott in 1908, immediately after the passage I quoted, he states his purpose in wanting to see the manuscript -

"Thus I trust both to establish their authenticity,
"And to secure the knowledge for genuine students."

He really felt he hadn't got to the bottom of things, unless he had seen the founding documents for himself.
 

Ross G Caldwell

I wonder if Crowley gained his "second hand" knowledge of the Cipher MS from George Cecil Jones or Allen Bennett? Given Crowley's close relationship with both men, it's almost a certainty that he would have questioned either or both of them on the subject. But would either of them have had access to the MS?

It is hard to know exactly what he got from whom, but both Bennett and Jones were Second Order (5=6 and up) initiates, so he would have taken advantage of everything they had copied, which was surely a lot. And of course Mathers, who must have had everything there was to have... except the Cipher Manuscripts and the Sprengel letters.

Crowley preserves some interesting fragments of otherwise lost Isis-Urania practices, like what was apparently the Portal Ritual used there. He presents it as "S.A.'s copy no. 2 of the 'Ritual of the 24th, 25th and 26th Paths Leading from the First Order in the Outer to the 5°=6°", in Equinox I,2, pp. 242, and 284-288.

"S.A." is Sapere Aude, that is, Westcott. So he had copied somebody's version of Westcott's "copy number 2" of the Portal Ritual.

What is interesting in this version of the Ritual is that it seems to show that Marco Pasi is mistaken in the last part of where he recently says that Crowley "...claimed to have attained, in the early 1920s, the last degree, which he chose to call “Ipsissimus” (in the original GD system this grade had been left unnamed)."

(Marco Pasi, “Crowley, Aleister”, in Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, (Brill, 2006) p. 285)

It is indeed difficult to find any reference to the grade name of 10=1 in Golden Dawn sources, but this Portal Ritual seems to indicate that it was already named Ipsissimus, as one might expect.

If you compare Westcott's Copy no. 2 as quoted by Crowley on page 242 -

"“Before you upon the Altar is the diagram of the Sephiroth and Paths with which you are already well acquainted, having marked thereon the grade of the order corresponding to each Sephira, and the Tarot Trumps appropriated to each Path.”

- with the version of the Portal Ritual in either The Golden Dawn (in the Stella Matutina version, vol. 2 pp. 155-195) or The Portable Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic (Golden Dawn version, very little different from that of the Stella Matutina; vol. 7, pp. 2-25), you will see that this text of Westcott's Copy no. 2 is not in the ritual.

Furthermore, if you compare the diagrams for the setup of the temple in the ritual in both Crowley and the two Golden Dawn sources, you will notice that the Altar setup is different - Crowley-Westcott have the Tree of Life with the Paths and Grades, and the Golden Dawn sources do not.

This is the important part - Crowley shows us what that diagram contained, what he saw and was taught (and copied for himself) in that initiation, on page 243 of the Equinox I,2 - it contained the name "Ipsissimus" as the Grade for Kether, 10=1.

So, Pasi is wrong, and Crowley did not make up the name himself. It was just the original practice of the Isis-Urania Temple, that is, the original functioning Lodge of the Golden Dawn. The version of the Ritual published by Regardie, whether the Stella Matutina version or the 1894-95 version he uses in volume 7 of The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic (see volume 6, p. 1 for his account of these documents, originally copied in the 19th century by Frater D.P.A.L.) must come from another source, one that suppressed the display of the Tree of Life with Grades.