From: SALLY DAVIS (for contact details see below)

May 2015

This is the last in my sequence of ‘life by date’ files charting the life of Marcus Worsley Blackden who was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in August 1896. It contains two translations Blackden made of passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

There’s no explanation in either article for the [] brackets but I imagine they are words inserted by Blackden to make the text clearer, and perhaps also to make it easier to chant or sing.

1) Repelling the Dismemberment which is carried out in the divine underworld (though Blackden notes that the concept ‘underworld’ was completely unknown in ancient Egypt). It appeared in Occult Review volume 5 January-June 1907; volume 5 number 6, June 1907: The Wisdom of the Mysteries in Egypt. Published London: William Rider and Son, editor Ralph Shirley. The quotation marks are Blackden’s.

P315

“I am” is the divine luminary of each day [and] I cannot be taken by my arms. I cannot be seized by my hands; neither men, nor gods, nor shining ones, nor the dead, whether mortal or immortal, whether Initiate or yet unborn can work me Violence.

“I am” is the manifestation of wholeness; his Name is not known.

“I am” is of the Past, but beholder of the Aeons [of futurity] is my name.

Pass! Pass! Along the paths, O ye awarding judges, for “I am” is the lord of Eternity, and my award, yea, even mine, is to be like the Creator.

“I am” is the Lord of the Royal Crown.

“I am” is the dweller in God’s Eye [even in] my dual egg, my twin eggs whence I derive my life.

“I am” is in God’s Eye when it is closed, and I am the protector thereof, for I have come forth; I have risen cloudless; I have entered into my life.

P316

“I am” is in God’s Eye, and my place is upon my Throne; yea, I sit thereon within my shrine.

“I am” is Horus, the traveller of the Aeons, and I have commanded my throne; yea, I rule it, for behold! between utterance and silence I am balanced, and lo! my thoughts are cast down.

“I am” is “Beautiful Being”, and season after season he hath his possessions therein, one by one as it passeth round.

“I am” is the dweller in God’s Eye, and no evil thing can happen unto me; the makers of turmoil are not for me.

“I am” is the opener of the five-rayed star in Heaven, the ruler of the throne, the appointer of the births in to-day of the smitten child declared of yesterday.

“I am” is “to-day”.

O! Nation after nation, “I am” is your protector unto the Aeons; but whether ye are of Heaven or of earth, of the south, the north the east or the west, my fear is in your bodies.

“I am” is the ideal in his eye, and I die no more, but my moment is in your bodies and my thought is within me.

“I am” is the unknown, but the Red Ones turn their faces unto me.

“I am” is the unbinder, and this season cannot find what he hath done for me, yet heaven is revealed, earth is discerned, births cease, they cannot bind, that my name should pass away, by any evil thing.

O! Great one of utterance in Speech, I speak to thee. “I am” is risen cloudless, illuminating wall after wall, one after the other, until the day lacks nothing that it should possess, passing! Passing! Past! Past! Lo! I have spoken to thee.

“I am” is the flower-bloom manifesting in the primeval waters, and my mother is the abyss of Heaven. Hail! to my creator.

“I am” is the motionless [one], the great knot within the past, and the power of binding is within my hand; I am not known, he knoweth me. I am not grasped, he graspeth me. Hail! to my Egg, my Egg.

“I am” is Horus, ruling within the Aeons, but my flame is toward their faces, and their hearts flee from me.

I rule my throne; the present passes along the path I have appointed, for I am set free from all evil.

“I am” is the essential spirit of the gold of [the balance(1)] having neither hands nor feet, yet ruling within the temple of the pattern (2) of the artificer (3), and my wholeness is the wholeness of the essential spirit who ruleth within the temple of the pattern (2) of the artificer (3).

Blackden’s notes:

(1) ‘balance’ is Blackden’s best guess at a word in the text which is now indecipherable.

(2) Blackden has translated this word as ‘pattern’ but he says that it could equally well be translated as ‘shape’; original word was ‘Ka’.

(3) the ‘artificer’ is the god Ptah.

2) The Hymn to Osiris, his translation of a passage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It was published in Theosophical Review volume 42 number 249 May 1908: p238-40. The capitals are Blackden’s.

P238

Worship OSIRIS, Lord of Eternity,

Beautiful Being,

Horus of the East and of the West,

[Whose] shapes are countless [in variety],

[Whose] forms are infinite,

Opener and Closer,

Master in the City of the Sun,

p239 Lord of the Hall of Mystery,

Designer of the Archetype of Deity.

The Leaders of the Pentagram give glory unto Thee,

[When] Thou restest in the firmament,

[When] ISIS folds Thee in her arms in peace,

[When] she turns back the storm from the gate of Thy paths,

[When] Thou showest Thy face to the West,

Lighting up the Two Lands with Thy silver gold,

[And] the dead rise up to look towards Thee,

[For] they taste of the winds when they see Thy face,

Like the disk rising cloudless in his horizon.

Their heart knows peace because of Thine act,

Thou who art the eternal Aeon.

The lamps of ON give homage unto Thee

[With] the unborn souls in the City of Strife,

O Being more glorious than the gods of the mystery

Which dwells in the City of the Sun.

The Pillars of the Altar give Thee homage,

Vast [One], Horus of the Twin Horizons;

The span of whose stride crosses the Heavens,

Who art Heru Ikhuti.

Homage unto Thee, Soul of the Aeon,

Dual soul dwelling between the Pillars,

Beautiful Being, Child of the Heavenly Abyss,

Who art Lord of the Silent Mountain.

Homage unto Thee when Thou rulest the Pillars;

The double crown is firm upon Thy brow,

Thou art UNITY making his own protection,

Thy peace is between the Pillars.

Homage unto Thee as Lord of the Tree,

Placing the Barge of Finality upon her launching-slip,

Repelling the Demons of Destiny,

Giving rest to the Eye at her place.

P240

Homage unto Thee, Strong One in His moment,

Great chief, ruling within the Desert Shrine,

Lord of the Aeon, Maker of Eternity,

Thou art Lord of the Royal Child.

Homage unto Thee, resting upon Truth,

Thou art Lord of the Shrine of the Unmanifest,

The Holy Land hath formed Thy Limbs,

Thou art He whose abomination is deceit.

Homage unto Thee in the midst of His Barque,

[Whom] the Heavenly Nile beareth from His cavern,

[When] the Light riseth cloudless upon his body.

He is the dweller in the Child.

Homage unto Thee, Maker of Gods,

King of the Upper and the Lower, OSIRIS! True of voice;

Grasping the Two Lands in his times of perfection,

He is Lord both of the Outer and the Inner.

Give Thou unto me a path that I may pass into Peace;

[For] ‘I am’ is [the] Balanced [One];

[Yea], I utter no lie, because I know.

If you want to read the other files in this sequence, Worsley Blackden’s ‘life by dates’ 1864 to 1934, find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:

http:pws.prserv.net/Roger_Wright/

BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.

Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A Gilbert. Northampton: The Aquarian Press 1986. Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders between 1888 and 1914. The list is based on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their initiation. All this information had been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden. Please note, though, that the records of the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01. I have recently (July 2014) discovered that some records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have survived, though most have not; however those that have survived are not yet accessible to the public.

For the history of the GD during the 1890s I usually use Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923. Published Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972. Foreword by Gerald Yorke. Howe is a historian of printing rather than of magic; he also makes no claims to be a magician himself, or even an occultist. He has no axe to grind.

Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate); findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees on the web.

Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even for the female members of GD. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Who Was Who. Times Digital Archive.

Useful source for business and legal information: London Gazette and its Scottish counterpart Edinburgh Gazette. Now easy to find (with the right search information) on the web.

Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.

Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources. I also used other web pages, but with some caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great deal.

18 May 2015

Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:

http:pws.prserv.net/Roger_Wright/

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