Waite's FRC Rituals and Ceremonies in PDF

Abrac

I've put together all (that I have) of Waite's Fellowship of the Rosy Cross rituals and ceremonies in one PDF; they come from several different sources. They're a little primitive but I've cleaned them up and organized them in the proper order according to the following outline. I also added bookmarks and made it searchable.

First Order - World of Action

1. Neophyte Initiation
2. Zelator Initiation
3. Solemn Festival of the Equinox
4. The Ceremony of Consecrating a Temple for the Mysteries of the First and Second Orders

Second Order - World of Formation

1. Theoreticus Initiation
2. Practicus Initiation
3. Philosophus Initiation

Third Order - World of Creation

1. Ceremony of Reception in the Portal of the Third Order
2. Adeptus Minor Initiation
3. Adeptus Major Initiation
4. Adeptus Exemptus Initiation
5. ?*
6. ?*
7. The Ceremony of Consecration for a Temple of the Third Order

The Ceremony of Consecration on the Threshold of Sacred Mystery

Fourth Order - World of Supernals

1. The Ceremony of Reception in the Portal of the Fourth Order**
2. The Ceremony of Contemplation on the Further Side of the Portal**
2. The Ceremony of Enthroning a Keeper of the Sacred Mystery
3. The Ritual of Return in Light
5. The Pontifical Ceremony of Celebrating the Festivals of the Winter and Summer Solstice

* Indicates rituals that should exist based on the numbering, but I don't know what they are.

** Indicates rituals I know exist but I haven't yet acquired them.

One of the things I like most about these is Waite's descriptions of the Great Symbols of the Paths and how they shed additional light on the RWS Tarot. Here's the Direct Download Link. [34mb] :)

*There's one major mistake that I'm aware of; it's in the Practicus Initiation. The path from Yesod to Hod is Quoph, but in the First Point of the ritual it says, "The Ceremonial Admission of a Frater Theoreticus in the Path of Resh." It also says Resh in a few other places in the ritual where it should be Quoph. It's clearly a typo as the same ritual uses Quoph instead of Resh in a few places; and it's made clear in other rituals that Resh is Netzach-Malkuth. There's another place where the wrong path number is indicated but I'm not sure off the top of my head where it is.
 

Abrac

I went ahead and corrected the known errors in the PDF and uploaded the new version. I replaced RESH with QUOPH in the appropriate places in the Practicus Initiation. Also in the Practicus Initiation it said 30th Path in one place where it should've said 29th. And I found a mistake in the Adeptus Major Initiation where it said "Second" Reflected Triad but it should've been "First" Reflected Triad, so I corrected that. This should make it less confusing and easier to use.
 

parsival

Waite's FRC Rituals

Hi Abrac

Thanks for your excellent work on this . Any chance that you could put up a copy of " Shadows of Life and Thought " ?
 

Abrac

parsival you have a PM
 

parsival

Waites sources for the RWS

Wonder if anyone has read Ronald Decker's recently published and very interesting " The Esoteric Tarot ' in which he claims that the Cabalistic sources for the meanings of the minor trumps of the TdM are to be found in a book called " The Gates of Light ' by the Cabalist Joseph Gikatilla who was an influence on the French cartomancer Alliette or Etteilla . According to Decker's research , the major trumps on the other hand derive from Pythagorean Neoplatonism.
Decker claims that Waite's inspiration for the minor trumps of the RWS came mainly from Etteilla. Here is a quotation from Decker's book :
"Many of the numeral cards ( of the RWS ) maintain direct connections to Etteilla’s cartomancy. Waite encountered it through multiple channels: fragmentarily, through the instruction that he received as a member of the Golden Dawn, and comprehensively, through his own research into the entire cartomantic tradition. Oddly, he professed to despise cartomancy, although he encouraged it through several books. In an annotated bibliography in his Pictorial Key, Waite cited Papus’s 1909 survey and insulted its author, its illustrator, and its readership—even though Waite’s deck is comparable to Papus’s deck in relying on Christian and Etteilla. Waite at the same time blatantly promoted The Tarot of the Bohemians, Papus’s incoherent book of 1889. Waite was not quite objective about it. He had been hired to reissue it. However, years later, he dismissed that book and all French Tarotism as a “tissue of errors.”
 

Abrac

This seems pretty far off topic but I'll comment and maybe one of the moderators will move it.

I've not read that book but I've read Decker's Art and Arcana, his commentary on the Medieval Scapini Tarot. In it he also postulates that Scapini was influenced by Gikatilla. Most of it is conjecture based on iconography in Scapini that "could've" been inspired by Gikatilla. In his new book does he site any references that clearly show a connection between Gikatilla and Etteilla?
 

parsival

Waite's source for the RWS

Decker attempts to correlate words used by Gikatilla in his "Gates of Light " to describe the various Sephiroth with certain words in the divinatory meanings given by Eteilla and later Waite . I suppose its quite speculative .
Quote:

"Unknown students of the cabala in the early 1700s (I would guess) evidently read Gates of Light and contrived to recall its sephiroth. What language did those students use? A clue may reside in the meaning for Etteilla’s Ace of Swords (“extreme, furious”). In discussing the related sphere of Kether, Gikatilla quotes from Deuteronomy 33:27, which can be translated: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (cf. the RSV Bible). But a more “furious” translation is: “He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old” (cf. the New RSV Bible). That study of Gikatilla’s sephiroth must have involved a student who understood the subtleties of the original Hebrew. The Hebrew source could have been the Sha’are Orah published by Zeligman Raiz (Offenbach, 1715) ".
 

Abrac

It sounds like an interesting book. I don't know enough about Etteilla to comment one way or another; but Waite was familiar with Gikatilla and quotes him in his Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah. He also uses the phrase "Gates of Light" several times in his FRC rituals.
 

Abrac

I uploaded an update of Waite's rituals and updated the previous download link. I got the size down by about half without sacrificing much quality. I also corrected an error I found in the Adeptus Minor Ritual. The title page said "World of Formation" but it should be "World of Creation." I updated the bookmarks and created bookmarks for the parts in the text where it talks about the Great Symbols.
 

ldiddy

Nice work!

Thanks for the document. I'm looking forward to reading it through and will post questions here.