R A Gilbert | Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner

Tag Archives: R A Gilbert

June 8, 2026 · 12:17 pm

R A Gilbert – Secret Chief of the Golden Dawn

“Mors Ianua Vitae”

I first heard of the name R A Gilbert (1942 – 2026) in the context of The Golden Dawn Companion: the Rise and Fall of a Magical Order, of which he was the author. This is the definitive history of the scandals which engulfed the original order – as well as a candid examination of how it all got started in the first place, together with biographical sketches of the principal personalities of the order. It was mainly through this book, and several others, that Gilbert established his reputation during his lifetime as the foremost Historian of the Golden Dawn.

I therefore found it supremely ironic, that whenever Gilbert was asked to state his opinion of the Golden Dawn, he always proclaimed that he positively hated it. He was deeply suspicious of anything which tended towards what he considered black magick – or in other words, most of what the Golden Dawn practiced – and mightily glad that the original order closed down! I therefore regarded his wanting to be known as a Historian of something he didn’t actually like and of which he spoke publicly only in the most curmudgeonly of terms as a deeply cynical move on his part.

That was – until I learnt the truth about Gilbert, and the secret life he led, the full extent of which has never heretofore been publicly revealed, to wit:

Bob Gilbert had been secretly helping several modern Golden Dawn orders from behind the scenes all the time. In other words, the modern Golden Dawn is flourishing due to the direct influence of Gilbert!

During the GD Flame Wars of the early 2000s, Gilbert publicly admitted to lending original GD material in his possession to both Chic Cicero and Pat Zalewski, as examples of people who were deliberately trying to run authentic GD orders – this despite the fact that Gilbert distanced himself from the Order, although he later claimed to have been offered honorary memberships in several different ones.

It later transpired that despite his public persona, in private Gilbert often directed willing enquirers to the Golden Dawn. Then, some time ago, the most remarkable thing of which I am personally aware occurred:

A Freemason of my acquaintance found himself facing disciplinary proceedings from UGLE because he was accused of being a member of the Golden Dawn! Strings were pulled, and the head of his GD order procured a written statement from an authoritative source which stated why membership of the Golden Dawn was compatible with Freemasonry after all. It was written by Bob Gilbert.

I happened to see what Gilbert had written, and it struck me as the most beautiful defence of the Golden Dawn system I had ever seen. It was superb: an eloquent piece cleverly asserting the purity of the Golden Dawn’s intentions, and the fact that a Freemason could validly sit in a Golden Dawn temple without breaking any obligations.

My masonic acquaintance forwarded Gilbert’s piece to the United Grand Lodge of England – they dropped all reference to the Golden Dawn in their accusations against him (he was still expelled from UGLE for other reasons). The Golden Dawn had been effectively vindicated thanks to Gilbert’s efforts.

It occurred to me that this was the real reason why Gilbert appeared to remain aloof from the GD in public. It was precisely because he was independent, that he could rely on his credentials as a senior Freemason and a Historian in the service of the Golden Dawn without any criticism of partiality.

The Golden Dawn, and members of the GD who are Freemasons in particular, therefore owes Gilbert a debt of gratitude. I just hope that others will rise to fill his place – so that the Golden Dawn will continue to be protected in secret.

Golden Dawn Exhibition, 19th December 2013

The Minutum Mundum

To London yesterday, where I assumed human form and attended a strictly-invite only exhibition of artefacts from the original Golden Dawn, dating right from the founding of the Isis-Urania temple and even before.

The place: the Grand Officers’ Robing Room at the United Grand Lodge of England, Great Queen Street. The exhibition was a selection of materials kept in the archives of the Library & Museum of Freemasonry. Although this material has been available for inspection for some time – as I first reported in the post Golden Dawn Manuscripts and Where To Find Them – this was the first time that an actual exhibition had been organised of them. This was quite an event to see so much on display in one place all at once, as usually one can only view each individual piece one at a time. That this came about was mainly thanks to a series of negotiations between Susan Snell, the head archivist, and one of my contacts in the “Illuminati.”

Hegemon and Hierophant wand. They appear to have been made from bannisters!

One of four tablets on display yesterday, each depicting the symbolism of one of the elements (in this instance, Earth).

There was room for fifty people (all seats were taken). As I surveyed the attendees I noted that there were large contingents from two supposedly rival GD orders! I say “supposedly” but this did not stop us going down the pub together later that evening. The actual exhibition was preceded by a talk about the Golden Dawn collections: however it was purely given from a scholarly and archival point of view. That is to say, the speakers were completely expert about how researchers would be able to use the collections to conduct further research into the GD, although they knew nothing of the magic of the GD itself. In that respect, those experts were in the audience listening to them.

The GD material at Great Queen Street has provenance from two main sources. Firstly, there was a collection which was acquired in 1920: secondly, there was another large collection acquired from a private source in 2008. The staff didn’t actually say who this private source was, although given that a lot of the items on display previously featured prominently in Bob Gilbert’s The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order, it doesn’t take the world’s greatest magician to have a guess.

None of the material was secret per se, as it has all been written about extensively before. However, it was a great pleasure to appreciate the exquisite draughtsmanship and care which the original members of the GD had taken in creating their bits and pieces.

My favourite exhibit was the complete membership roll of the Isis-Urania Temple. It literally was a gigantic (A0) roll, with the name and motto of each member who had passed through its doors, right up until the last initiate who entered in 1910 (the temple was closed two years later). It was great fun picking out the names of all the famous people of whom I had heard. I noticed that a large number of names had been struck through with a line. Some people standing nearby were wondering why those particular names were struck through so I took a closer look and realised: they were the names of all the people who had sided with Mathers at the time of the 1900 schism. Except for Aleister Crowley – whose name was crossed out three times.