Tag Archives: Golden Dawn

March 26, 2012 · 1:28 pm

How To Be Chief Adept Of Your Own Magical Order!

So there I was the other day reading Fire and Ice by Stephen Flowers, about the rituals of the Fraternitas Saturni. Needless to say, all that sex and drugs was of interest to me purely for the purposes of research for a future novel *cough*. But one thing I did note was to do with the role of the head of the order. The Gradus Ordinis Templi Orientis Saturni, he was known, had a specific magical role – to bring through the Saturnian Demiurge around which the order was centered.

This got me thinking about the role of the Chief Adept in the Golden Dawn (RR & AC), specifically in the 5=6 ceremony – where he or she effectively plays the part of “Christian Rosenkreutz.” So despite the magic of the GD and FS being wildly different, the bloke in charge in each case is fulfilling a similar role – they are channelling the egregore of the order, as if it were a god-form.

Extrapolating from this, we can formulate a general rule about “How To Be Chief Adept Of Your Own Magical Order,” to wit: the Chief has to live the egregore. However I would go further than saying this means in a ritual context only – they really have to live the egregore in their everyday life. Perhaps this is the real teaching of the Adeptus Exemptus grade! (I wouldn’t know, I’m not privy to that information). So for example – the Golden Dawn, which is the one I am most familiar with. The Chief really ought to be the living personification of Christian Rosenkreutz, particularly with regard to spiritual and moral values. Moreover, the Chief must of necessity uphold every standard expected of the Order’s members. This is not just magical egregore work it is common sense: after all, if the Chief cannot live up to (e.g.) the Neophyte obligation, why should one expect the Neophytes to?

There is however a downside to this being a Chief / living the egregore type thang, and that is that if the putative Chief does not make a conscious effort to embody the spiritual & moral values of (e.g.) Christian Rosenkreutz, then the Order will nevertheless take on the egregore of the values that the Chief does embody – for good or ill. This is an awesome responsibility, and those that are not equal to the task really ought to be humble and not put themselves for Chiefship.

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March 8, 2012 · 10:12 am

Secret Chief Sweep-stake!

Nick Farrell has unearthed a hastily suppressed post by David Griffin claiming that the latter is going to name the secret puppet-master behind the Golden Dawn, but tantalisingly not revealing the name until the next post. Ooh, the anticipation! I was almost seriously tempted to subscribe to Griffin’s blog to find out more …

… But then I had a much better idea! It is (drum-roll) THE SECRET CHIEF SWEEP-STAKE. We each come in by picking whom we predict DG is going to name as the Capo Di Tutti Capi. The prize for winning is that everyone else has to buy a copy of one their books.

Nothing personal against DG, but because he actually knows the answer he is excluded from the competition. 🙂

I go first: I bags Bob Gilbert.

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March 5, 2012 · 6:29 pm

The Assumption of God Forms

This post is a reply to a comment of Facebook by Sorita D’Este regarding the Assumption of God Forms – specifically, how this is done in the Golden Dawn tradition. My position is: the assumption of a God form is a combination of both Invocation and Evocation – my reasons for saying so being as follows:

The actual technique in use in modern GD temples is confidential information, although a greatly simplified version is sort-of-alluded-to in Self-initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition by Chic and Tabatha Cicero. Essentially, the magician starts off by using a series of magical techniques to evoke an astral-form of the deity in question standing (or indeed sitting) in front of him- or herself. The magician then steps into the astral-form, as if wearing it – at the same time attempting to link his or her consciousness with that of the deity. This “linking of consciousness,” I submit, amounts to invocation of the powers which the God-form represents. The magician would then do whatever he/she needs to do, such as perform ritual or meditate, before ending the session by de-linking, stepping out of the form, and absorbing it back into oneself.

This amounts to more than just “porting” an entity from one area of the individual’s consciousness to another, in that one of the peculiarities of the Golden Dawn (specifically the Neophyte ceremony) the God-forms are evoked by one set of officers (the adepts) to be worn (invoked) by another (the floor officers). You might well think this is overly-sophisticated, but going through the whole procedure of building up a God-form and then assuming it does produce a palpable change in mental state, a magical state of consciousness, which cannot be dismissed lightly.

In my opinion, the old clichĂŠ about “invoking” being about calling something into something or oneself and “evoking” being calling something out of oneself is based on the fallacy that the Inside and the Outside are somehow detached from one another. In a Golden Dawn ceremony one can both Invoke an Evoked Power and Evoke an Invoked Power in the same ceremony, even switching between the two (e.g. the way that the Hierophant and Past Hierophant juggle god-forms during the Neophyte ceremony). I really think we should abandon the phrases Invoking and Evoking, and just call it “Voking.”

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February 8, 2012 · 1:10 pm

Adeptus Major

Today I am going to do a survey of the grade of 6=5 Adeptus Major, by examining how the various different offshoots of the Golden Dawn –  the Alpha et Omega, the Stella Matutina, the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross – decided to deal with the subject. The one thing they all have in common is that they agree the grade has to do with Geburah – in the same way that 5=6 Adeptus Minor is to do with Tiphereth – but there the similarities end. Each different faction went off in their own direction, having different ideas about what the Adeptus Major was actually meant to do.

As far as I am aware, none of the published Adeptus Major rituals are used by modern day Golden Dawn orders – they have gone on to use different or modified versions.

Alpha Et Omega

The cover for "Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers" by Tabatha Cicero, featuring a reconstructed version of the Tablet Of Union.

The Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers, by Sandra Tabatha Cicero

The Alpha et Omega 6=5 so-called Ritual has now been published: as an appendix to Tabatha Cicero’s new publication, “Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers.” I say so-called because the version published is not a real ritual. It does not have an opening or closing, nor does it have any drama in it. It consists of one chief officer, the “Conferring Adept,” teaching the signs and words of the grade to the Aspirant, who is prompted throughout the ceremony by a conductor. The explanation of the Tarot cards is brief. If anything, it is more of a fragment of a ritual – perhaps part of something that remains unpublished, or a work-in-progress.

The only interesting thing, IMHO, is that the brief explanation of the nature of the signs gives a tantalising glimpse into what Mathers might have imagined the work of an Adeptus Major to be – i.e. the use of Geburah-force to subdue evil entities – although no detail is given about the Adeptus Major curriculum itself. It is also interesting in that the symbolism anticipated the ideas the Crowley expressed about the nature of the Adeptus Major grade in the latter’s John St John.

Stella Matutina

Now the Adeptus Major ritual of the Stella Matutina is a far more interesting affair. An incomplete version of the ritual was published by Pat Zalewski in his book Secret Inner Order Rituals of the Golden Dawn: fortunately though, I have seen a copy dating from a Stella Matutina temple circa 1916, so I have been able to compare. Now this is a proper ritual. It has drama, it has beautiful ritualistic speeches, but most importantly it introduces in the course of the ritual several key qabalistic concepts which provide much food for thought. The ritual should be read in conjunction with the account of W B Yeats’ own experience of this ceremony, which is printed in George Mills Harper’s Yeats’ Golden Dawn, which gives details of the astral work that went on invisibly as the ceremony took place.

This ritual lays much emphasis on the Shekinah – the divine presence of God – who is here portrayed by a female officer. Why the Shekinah? I believe the answer must lie in the fact that in Gematria, “Geburah” is equivalent to “Debir,” which is the Holy of Holies, where the Shekinah was said to reside upon the Ark of the Covenant between the wings of the two kerubs. The aspirant is therefore the High Priest, who goes into the Holy of Holies (actually the Vault of the Adepti which has been re-dressed for the occasion) and after a period of meditation discovers the Shekinah, who first comes to him (or her) like a light-bearer in darkness.

An interesting feature is that the Aspirant remains completely silent throughout the ceremony, until formally released at its climax. It is worth noting that quite separately Wynn Westcott did indeed describe the Adeptus Major grade as:

“…a degree of death and solemnity—referring to the precedent stage of obscuration, during which silent study and meditation may be considered as the typical condition…”

Flying Roll XVI, the History of the Rosicrucian Order.

One is tempted to speculate that in this respect the Stella Matutina ceremony is probably more to what Westcott intended than that of the AO! Unlike the AO ceremony, which is nothing but signs and an explanation thereof, the Stella Matutina 6=5 mentions two signs (“thou shalt avert thy eyes from evil as did Isis on the right … thou shalt withdraw from evil as did Nephthys on the left,”) but does not really demonstrate what they are: obviously part of the esotery that was only transmitted from person to person.

The lacuna in Zalewski’s ritual amounts to three-fifths of the oath being omitted (the oath of an Adeptus Major is in five parts), as well as an instruction that the Aspirant is censed in the form of a Pentagram, before being led out temporarily before the next point in the ceremony. When read in full, the oath of the Adeptus Major reveals that the duty of the new initiate is to apply the severity of Geburah to his or her own moral nature, whilst emphatically being merciful to the faults of others.

I found one mistake when I first read Zalewski’s version, however: when I checked, I found that the mistake had been in the original ritual! Namely: the wrong passages of the Sepher Yetzirah are quoted when the aspirant is given the teachings of the Paths of Mem and Lamed.

A sort of curriculum has emerged as to what the Stella Matutina envisioned for the Adeptus Major grade. Although on first reading it does not seem much, from my own personal researches I believe that additional papers were also issued to the adepts which suggested ways in which the Adeptus Major practices could be extended to achieve extremely sophisticated results. In any event, the lines “try to find your own Path for the Inner Life,” and “now is the time to fill in gaps of the 5=6 syllabus and to choose your special subject in which to qualify,”  conceal more than they reveal: I get the impression that Felkin, the author of the Stella Matutina 6=5 ritual, believed that if the Adeptus Minor grade was equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree in Magic, then the Adeptus Major was equivalent to a Master’s.

Holy Order of the Golden Dawn / Fellowship of the Rosy Cross

Aleister Crowley in A.'.A.'. regalia making the sign "Vir."

Whaddaya mean, I’m not the prophet of a new aeon?

The Holy Order of the Golden Dawn Adeptus Major Ritual has now been published in Regardie’s Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic. It catches Waite as he was beginning to embrace mysticism, yet had not completely thrown off all of the trappings of the original GD. Now here is a curious thing: despite superficial differences, much of the underlying structure of the first Waite ritual is identical to that of the Stella Matutina version. E.g. the aspirant remains in silence until released in the final part of the ceremony, he or she goes into the Vault for a period of meditation, before encountering the Shekinah, who leads the aspirant out. Intriguingly, Waite identifies the Shekinah as Nuit, and the newly advanced aspirant as Horus. Could this in fact mean that Waite was a secret Thelemite (extremely ironic given the caning he received from Crowley in the Equinox)? Or perhaps when Crowley received the Book of the Law, the Gods were telling him not to become the prophet of a new aeon, but that he was now ready to become an Adeptus Major?

After the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn closed, Waite founded the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. The grades are named after those of the Golden Dawn – but Waite finally took the opportunity to abandon the last vestiges GD dogma of which he disapproved and finally do his own thing. Nevertheless, the FRC Adeptus Major ritual still displays certain similarities to the version he wrote for the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn. There is a sojourn within the sanctuary, the Shekinah makes an appearance – but the insistence of silence is strictly removed. Needless to say, any references to Horus and Nuit have been removed.

As far as I know, there was no curriculum per se for the FRC grades – I believe that Waite intended the ceremony itself to be both the initiation into and the teaching of a given grade. In this sense the FRC is rather like a masonic version of Rosicrucianism. I did hear one senior esotericist say that this being the case, an initiate could theoretically be advanced through each grade at successive meetings, or slightly less than a year if they met every month, although I doubt very much that this would happen in practice.

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February 5, 2012 · 10:39 am

The L Word

The cast of "The L Word" sans clothes though non-explicit

These people do not care about "Lineage."

No order claiming to be “Rosicrucian” has any lineage whatsoever! Even the genuine ones (if there is such a thing).

The reason is simple: they have no lineage because the original order described in the Fama Fraternitatis had none itself. When Frater N was sitting in the library that fateful day in 1604, he had absolutely no way of knowing that he was truly connected to the original order founded by CRC. Then by chance he found the Vault of the Adepti, and based his legitimacy to be a Rosicrucian purely on the fact of that discovery.

So: anytime you hear anyone go on about the L Word, just remember that Rosicrucianism itself was never founded on the basis of lineage, but on possession – even physical possession – of “Rosicrucian secrets” e.g. The Vault, the cipher mss, etc.

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December 26, 2011 · 3:53 pm

Music In Theory & Practice 3: The Hexagram and Middle Pillar Rituals

More rituals scored according to Macgregor Mathers’ system of attributions.

The Lesser Hexagram Ritual

The Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram, composed by Alex Sumner Š 2011.

The Middle Pillar Ritual

The Middle Pillar Ritual, composed by Alex Sumner Š 2011.

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December 24, 2011 · 4:29 pm

Music In Theory and Practice – Part 2

S L Macgregor Mathers

Mathers’ corollary to “The Chromatic Method”

Following on from yesterday’s post, I would like to review a similar method which Macgregor Mathers gave to the Alpha et Omega – it is set out in full detail in Pat Zalewski’s book Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn.

Like Case and Bennett, Mathers made an association with colours and musical notes – however he differs in several important aspects. Firstly, Mathers starts with the assumption that Red = F, not C as in the Case / Bennett system. Secondly: there are no sharps or flats in Mathers’ system. Thirdly, the Seven planets follow a scale starting with the F above middle C, and ascending in the same order as the walls of the Vault of the Adepti. Hence:

Hebrew Letter Colour Note
Heh Pe Shin Red F
Vau Red-Orange F or G
Zayin Resh Orange G
Cheth Amber G or A
Teth Beth Aleph Yellow A
Yod Yellow-Green A or B
Lamed Daleth Green B
Nun Green-Blue B or C
Samekh Gimel Mem Blue C
Aayin Tau Indigo D
Tzaddi Kaph Violet E
Qoph Vermilion E or F

This system has its advantages – and disadvantages. From a musicological (read: “snobbish”) point of view, some of the reasons that Mathers gives for adopting the particular peculiarities of this system are suspect and inconsistent, and smack of “dumbing down.” The only reason I can see for starting with Red = F and treating the planets as he does is to make use of the spaces and lines of the Treble Clef. Perhaps if he was confident with leger lines we might have had a whole different secret teaching! It could, of course have been to allow Adepti to play the piano one-handed, the left-hand being left free to hold a ritual implement or something.

However, Mathers’ aversion to sharps and flats is something else. The reason Mathers gives for avoiding it touches upon a problem that musicians have had to deal with for thousands of years, namely Temperament. It is impossible to tune the twelve-note chromatic scale so that all intervals are “perfect” – therefore, historically, several different methods have been proposed including the Pythagorean, “Just Intonation” (like Pythagorean but with easier arithmetic), “Well Tempered” (made famous by Bach’s Das Wohltempierte Klavier), and “Equal Temperament,” amongst others. The upshot of this is that depending on which system of Temperament you are using, the actual tuning of some chromatic intervals might vary by as much as 10Hz – enough to create an out-of-tune “beating” sound, assuming two different instruments had been tempered differently.

How did the Secret Chiefs, from whom Mathers claimed to derive this teaching, resolve the problem of Temperament? Um, well, the unfortunate fact is that although they were willing to lay down minutiae on a whole host of other topics, they conveniently passed on this one: the simplest way for Mathers to resolve the situation was to avoid using sharps and flats.

Of course, on the other hand, Mathers might have interpreted “Quit the night and seek the day,” as meaning “avoid the black keys and play only the white keys.”

What we thus have from Mathers is therefore a reduction of the chromatic scale to the F-Lydian mode – ironic, as Mathers complained about using modes as well.

HOWEVER: the very fact that Mathers’ system is completely unsophisticated compared to the Case/Bennett system is in fact its greatest advantage – because it allows Hebrew words to be chanted in simple melodies. This in turn makes it highly conducive to teaching a temple full of initiates whose musical talent may well range from hardened rock-musicians reared on Frank Zappa and Led Zeppelin to, well, drummers. By way of example, I shall now attempt to re-score the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram according to the note-values suggested by Mathers.

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, composed by Alex Sumner Š 2011.

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November 10, 2011 · 10:50 pm

How To Use Horary Astrology With Tarot

A real Hermeticist would be able to crawl all the way through.

Horary Astrology is the art of using Astrology to answer a particular question. Essentially the astrologer notes the time, date, and place that he or she first heard the question (or if it is on behalf of oneself – when he or she first formulated the question). This becomes the moment the question is “born,” and the astrologer can then draw up a chart for it in the usual manner and interpret it to gain insight into the circumstances in which the question arose, what is likely to happen, and what the eventual outcome will be. Horary Astrology is slightly different from Natal Astrology, although the similarities are such that one who has already mastered the latter can easily learn to practice the former.

The leading text on the subject is Christian Astrology by William Lilly (1602 – 1681). Wikipedia claims that Lilly was the last major practitioner of Horary Astrology. I can asssure you that although it is not so well known as Natal Astrology there are still some of us who practice it today!

Being a Tarot reader as well, I find the Horary art intriguing, as it indicates a way that Astrology may be successfully combined with Tarot, to wit: by making a note of the time, date and place of when a question is asked for a tarot divination, one ought to be able to use Horary Astrology to double-check the results. Presumably if one’s astrological and tarot skills are as highly advanced as one another, one should find that the combined readings come up with the same results. In practice I find that the two types of reading complement one another, with each one providing extra details which are not apparent with the other.

Fifteen card tarot spread

So for example: the Tarot spread which I use most often is the fifteen-card spread, mainly because this was recommended for use with the first deck I ever bought, The Golden Dawn Tarot. The cards in the middle (2, 1, 3) represent the Here and Now. Those on the Right side (4, 8, 12; 7, 11, 15) represent what will happen if the Querent does not attempt to change his or her current course of action. Those on the Left ( 13, 9, 5; 14, 10, 6) however represent what will happen if he or she does attempt to change.  Moreover the top-row represents the short-term future, whilst the bottom row represents the long-term future.

Here then is a table of comparison between Horary Astrology and Tarot, specifically the fifteen-card spread.

What Horary Astrology 15 Card Spread
The circumstances in which the question arises is determined by… Luna, which represents the question itself. Its position in the chart gives information relating to the nature of the question. The distance of Luna from the last planet it conjuncted can be used to work out the date of a past event which has led to the current situation, or whether the cause is too remote in time. If Luna is “Void of Course” (i.e. it does not form a major aspect with any other planet before it leaves that particular sign), it indicates “Nothing will come of this question.” The central three cards, 2 – 1 – 3. The first card usually indicates the prime or main meaning whilst cards two and three aid in its interpretation (NB: in GD spreads, there are no “reversed” cards. Instead a card is “well-dignified” or “ill-dignified.” Dignity is determined by whether nearby cards are of a harmonious or inharmonious nature.)
The development of the question in the short-term is determined by… It depends – a horary figure admits some versatility. If the Querent is the astrologer him- or herself, the position of the Lord of the Ascendant will generally indicate what is likely to happen. The “Lord” of the Ascendant or indeed of any other given house is the Planet which rules it. In Horary Astrology Planets tend to represent actual people or things in the life of the Querent.If the Querent is someone else, then they will be represented by the Lord of the Descendant. If however the Querent is not asking on his/her own behalf but on that of someone else (e.g. a relative) or of something related to the Querent, then a house is selected to represent it and the Lord of that is examined. E.g. the tenth house relative to the Ascendant represents the Astrologer’s mother; the eleventh house relative to the Descendant (i.e. the fifth) represents the Friend of a querent where the querent is someone else, etc. The cards along the top row. The three on the right represent what will happen if the Querent does nothing in particular to changer his/her fate; the cards on the left represent what will happen if they do try something. Each triad of cards is interpreted in a similar manner to that above, with the left and right cards determing whether the middle card is well- or ill-dignified.
The end of the matter is determined by… The fourth house, and its ruler. Also, in a manner similar to that mentioned above, the position of Luna can also be used to determine when in the future a decisive event will occur. The cards along the bottom row. Those on the right can be imagined as being what will arise as a consequence of those on the right top-row; similarly with those on the left, mutatis mutandis.
Miscellaneous extra information is given by… Lilly’s work, cited above, gives examples of how a Horary figure may be used to extra effect in certain particular cases, e.g. finding lost items. A complete list of all the possible applications would be to long to put here. The number of each different type of card may also add another layer of interpretation, for example: the number of Aces, the number of Court Cards, the number of Trumps, and the number of cards of a particular suit. Personally, I only look upon the number of a particular type of card as significant if it is noticeably greater than the average number one would expect from an evenly shuffled deck. I.e. out of fifteen cards, the average number of

  • Any one suit is 2.7;
  • Trumps is 4.2;
  • Court cards is 3.1;
  • Aces is 0.8.
The relative merits of each type of divination are… Horary astrology aspires to give a more mathematical or precisely vision of the outcome of the question. Being somewhat arbitary it provides a tough yard-stick which forces the diviner to consider factors which might not have been apparent in a more subjective system such as tarot. Whilst not having a mechanism for being as definite as to dates etc as a Horary figure, I find the tarot cards provide more nuances of meaning than is suggested bylooking at the planets alone (this may just be a personal opinion.)

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July 13, 2011 · 8:50 am

Enochian Calls 16, 17 & 18 + site update

You now have the opportunity to view videos of all Enochian calls one to eighteen – including the fire calls which I finished last night. Instead of distributing them over multiple blog-posts, they are now gathered together in one play-list along with my other Enochian articles. Please click the Articles link at the top of this page.

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June 12, 2011 · 1:23 pm

The Divine Current: It works!!!

Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde

When a candidate to the Golden Dawn is obligated, he or she has to swear a terrible oath, the breaking of which entails sinister occult penalties for those who are foresworn. In the Cipher Manuscript the penalties were described simply as:

Death or Palsy

In the original Golden Dawn, this was described more colourfully as:

…the awful penalty of voluntarily submitting myself to a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the chiefs of the Order, by which I should fall slain and paralyzed without visible weapon as if slain by the lightning flash.

At Whare Ra this was rendered:

…a deadly Stream of Power, set in action by the Divine Guardians of this Order, Who, Living the light of their Perfect Justice, can, as tradition and experience affirm, strike the breaker of this magical obligation with death or palsy, or overwhelm him with misfortune.

In the Bristol Temple of the Stella Matutina, whence Regardie half-inched the rituals that he published in The Golden Dawn, the corresponding passage is rendered:

…a Stream of Power, set in motion by the Divine Guardians of this Order, Who live in the light of their Perfect Justice, and before Whom my Soul now stands.

So basically we can infer that the penalty was meant to be some pretty heavy-duty magic, like being struck down by a lightning bolt – only the Bristol temple decided to water it down and make it sound like some kind of fluffy-bunny politically correct version.

Now some people with an interest in esoteric Freemasonry – or at least, those people who remain in Freemasonry longer than two minutes so they can appreciate how esoteric it can be – will be aware of the Symbolic Penalties. Furthermore, they may be interested to know if they are not already aware that after you see through all the blood and gore, each Symbolic Penalty relates to a chakra: the first to the Throat; the second to the Heart; the third to the Solar-Plexus. This has further led people like Sebottendorf to speculate that the S…s – which relate to the Symbolic Penalties – indicate the way energy flows in a particular degree.

Now let’s look again at the original Golden Dawn obligation. Whilst the Cipher Manuscript merely talks about death or palsy, the version created by Mathers says: “as if slain by the Lightning Flash.” Oh-ho! The Lightning Flash is also the symbolic arrangement of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life! So perhaps Mathers too had this instinctive grasp of the relation between the Symbolic Penalty and the Energy Flow. Perhaps the real meaning – i.e. the real nuance that Mathers was trying to convey – was that if a Neophyte did not integrate the lightning flash (i.e. the Tree of Life) in his or her soul, then they would end up being destroyed by it instead. If this be true, and it appears quite reasonable, then we have to thank Mathers and his knowledge of the true value of Freemasonry for getting this point across.

There is however one problem with this whole business of being slain by the Lightning Flash, and that for all the oath-breakers in the original Golden Dawn there is no evidence that any of them ever suffered it. Until now. Some enterprising historian has actually discovered that at least one member of the Golden Dawn was actually struck down from creeping paralysis and was overwhelmed with misfortune after she left the order: Constance Wilde, wife of the famous playwrite. In a story published in the Sunday Express today, it is alleged that Constance Wilde left the order after only a year as a member and revealed such as she had learned to her husband. Everyone is familiar with the calamities that befell Oscar thereafter, but apparently she herself died aged 40, after having suffered from paralysis in her arms and legs.

Crikey! So the deadly stream of power does work after all! Ironic, then, that with all the people who did break their oaths and damaged the order, she was the only to succumb. Even more ironic is the fact that if you read Wilde’s output there is no evidence that he made use of any of Constance’s secrets. Want more irony? The first London production of Salome was put on in 1905 … directed by Florence Farr. 😉

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