Practice · Tools · Golden Dawn
Rose Cross Lamen
A wearable Golden Dawn synthesis of the elements, planets, zodiac, Hebrew letters, Sephiroth, and the order's colour scale—and the diagram from which many of its sigils are drawn.
What the source describes
Manuscripts E and F call the Rose Cross a general working implement, an insignia of the Zelator Adeptus Minor, and the 'Key of Sigils and of Rituals.' Its rose distributes the twenty-two Hebrew letters into three elemental, seven planetary, and twelve zodiacal petals. The cross joins the four elemental arms to a white field for Spirit and the planets, with the rose at Tiphareth as the meeting place of Sephiroth and paths.
Historical setting
This implement belongs to the Golden Dawn's initiatory and ceremonial system. That system reorganized earlier ritual objects into a coordinated elemental set; the resulting assignment should be dated to the order rather than projected backward into medieval grimoires.
Common uses
It is worn from a yellow ribbon at Second Order work and is present in the consecration of the Magic Sword and the four elemental weapons. The lettered rose also provides the grid from which the manuscript derives sigils: the line begins with a small circle on the first letter and runs from letter to letter, with special marks for doubled or intersected letters. In its own consecration, planetary hexagrams are traced over the white field, elemental pentagrams over the coloured arms, and the lotus wand circles the three orders of rose petals.
Form, materials and reconstruction
The rays are white with black lettering. The Air arm is yellow with a purple pentagram and symbols; Fire is scarlet with emerald; Water is blue with orange; Spirit is white with black; Earth combines citrine, russet, olive, and black with a white pentagram and symbols. The centre is white with a red rose and golden cross, and the whole hangs from yellow silk. The making note permits card and painted or applied coloured paper, stresses clean and brilliant colour, and gives no official size; its later pragmatic suggestion is about seven to eight inches long.
Element: No fixed element
The Rose Cross contains a mapped place for Spirit and for all four elements, but the source does not assign the whole lamen to one element. Giving it a single element would erase the synthesis that the manuscript says it represents.
Sources and variations
This is the Golden Dawn Rose Cross lamen, not a generic Rosicrucian cross and not the Goetic use of a spirit's seal as a lamen. Its exact lettering and colour placement belong to this order's Second Order curriculum.
Primary account used here
Golden Dawn manuscripts, Manuscripts E–F, 'Rose Cross' and 'Sigils from the Rose' ↗
Further references
- Crowley, Book 4, Part II ↗A later ceremonial interpretation of the wand, cup, sword, pantacle and temple furniture.
- Book 4, Part II: 1913 first edition ↗Bibliographic record and page scan for checking Crowley's later illustrations and wording.