A∴A∴
1907 · England
Crowley and George Cecil Jones' order, founded after Crowley's quarrel with the Golden Dawn. It keeps the Golden Dawn's grades and its structure of an outer and inner order, and replaces the group ceremony with a relation between one student and one teacher.
Is anything of the name working now?
The name is in use, and contested
More than one body uses the name and they do not recognise one another. No court has been asked. The order's own doctrine makes the question unanswerable in principle: the real order is held to be an invisible one that no visible body can be checked against.
What can be gleaned from it
Its whole syllabus is printed, numbered and free to read — The Equinox was the order's own publication and was meant to be read by outsiders. It also supplies the single most useful admission in this section: its account of itself announces, in its own headnote, that it is a rewrite of somebody else's book from 1802.
IT is necessary, my dear brothers, to give you a clear idea of the interior Order ; of that illuminated community which is scattered throughout the world, but which is governed by one truth and united in one spirit. This community possesses a School, in which all who thirst for knowledge are instructed by the Spirit of Wisdom itself; and all the mysteries of nature are preserved in this school for the children of light. Perfect knowledge of nature and of humanity is taught in this school. It is from her that all truths penetrate into the world ; she is the school of all who search for wisdom, and it is in this community alone that truth and the explanation of all mystery are to be found.
In plain English The claim every one of these bodies makes in some form: that behind the visible society there is an invisible one, and that the visible society is its outer expression. It is unfalsifiable by design, and it is what makes a broken lineage survivable — the real order was never the one with the minute book.
The Revisers wish to acknowledge gratefully the translation of Madame de Steiger, which they have freely quoted.
In plain English The A∴A∴'s account of itself is a rewrite of a book published in 1802 by Karl von Eckartshausen, and the headnote says so. Nothing had to be uncovered to establish it: the borrowing is printed on the page, above the text that borrows.
Founding
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Founded 1907
- The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283 in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted
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Founder Aleister Crowley
- The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283 in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted
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Founder George Cecil Jones
Crowley's fellow Golden Dawn initiate. This study's chronology has no page for him.
- The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283 in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted
In the chronology: Aleister Crowley.
What it came out of, and what came out of it
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Came out of founded_by_members
Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1898 and quarrelled with its leadership; the A∴A∴ keeps its grade ladder and its outer-and-inner structure.
- The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Egil Asprem, ‘The Golden Dawn and the O.T.O.’, pp. 272–283 in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted
A descent is a claim in this database and never a column, so every line above and below carries a source. See Evolution for the whole chain and for what the five kinds of descent mean.
On the record
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Its account of itself a rewrite of Eckartshausen's Die Wolke über dem Heiligtum (1802)
Not an accusation and not a discovery: The Equinox prints it under Eckartshausen's name, describes it as revised and rewritten, and thanks Isabelle de Steiger for the translation it quotes. The order's account of its own invisible antiquity is openly a hundred-year-old book.
- An Account of A∴A∴, An Account of A∴A∴ — The Equinox, volumes I and III:1