Cipher Manuscripts
The "Cipher Manuscripts" is a compilation of around 60 folios containing the structural outline of a series of initiation rituals corresponding to the spiritual elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire. The "occult" materials in the Manuscripts are a compendium of the Classic Magical Theory and Symbolism known in the Western world up until the mid-19th Century, combined to create an encompassing model of the Western Mystery Tradition.
The Manuscripts
The text is written in plain English from right to left in a simple substitution cryptogram known as the Trithemius cipher, attributed to Johannes Trithemius, a medieval German abbot. Numerals are substituted by Hebrew letters – Aleph=1, Beth=2, etc. Crude drawings of diagrams, magical implements and tarot cards are interspersed in the text. One final page translates into French and Latin.
The Ciphers contain the outlines of a series of graded rituals and the syllabus for a course of instruction in Qabalah and Hermetic magic, including Astrology, Tarot, Geomancy and Alchemy. It also contains several diagrams and crude drawings of various ritual implements. The Cipher Manuscripts is the original source upon which the rituals and the knowledge lectures of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were based.
The actual material itself described in the Manuscript is of known origins. Hermeticism, Alchemy, Qabalah, Astrology and Tarot were certainly not unknown to 19th century scholars of the Magical arts; the Cipher is a compendium of previously known Magical traditions. The basic structure of the rituals and the names of the Grades are based on those of the S.R.I.A.
Discovery
William Wynn Westcott, a London Deputy Coroner, member of the S.R.I.A. and one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, claimed to have received the manuscripts through Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, who was a colleague of Kenneth Mackenzie. The papers were to have been secured by Westcott after Mackenzie’s death in 1886, among the belongings of Mackenzie’s mentor, the late Frederick Hockley.
The Manuscripts also contained an address of an aged adept named Fräulein ("miss") Sprengel in Germany, to whom Westcott wrote inquiring about the contents of the papers. Fräulein Sprengel responded, and after accepting the requests of Westcott and Mathers, issued them a charter to operate a Lodge of the Order in England. Westcott's first Golden Dawn Temple was the Isis-Urania Lodge, styled "No.3". Temple No.1 would have been Fräulein Sprengel's lodge, and No. 2 was supposedly an abortive attempt at a lodge by some unnamed persons in London, (possibly a reference to Mackenzie and other S.R.I.A. members some years earlier.)
Controversy
There is considerable doubt among scholars that Westcott's story is accurate. In particular, the age and contents of the documents has been the subject of much controversy.
- The manuscripts are written on paper watermarked 1809, yet contain Egyptian imagery that was unknown to scholars before the deciphering of the Rosetta stone in 1822.
- References are made to the connection between the Kaballistic Tree of Life and the Tarot trumps. This idea was first put forth by French author Eliphas Levi in his book Dogme et rituel de la haute magie, published in 1856.
Possible sources of the Cipher Manuscripts
A variety of theories exist as to the real source of the Cipher Manuscript. Some of the more common ones include:
- Westcott and Mathers forged all the Manuscripts and letters themselves, and regardless of whether their motivations were good or ill, they made the whole thing up.
- The Sprengel letters were a forgery by Westcott, but the Manuscripts were written by Kenneth Mackenzie and/or other scholars of the S.R.I.A. (to which Westcott, Mathers and Woodman belonged as early as 1881.) Fräulein Sprengel was a legend invented by Westcott to give "lineage" to the newly formed order. Westcott created the mythology of the Cipher Manuscript's origins, knowing that a more "esoteric" source would carry weight with occultists of the era.
- There was no German order; the first "Golden Dawn Temple" was a project of a secret group within the S.R.I.A. called the "Society of Eight". (By the time Westcott "discovered" the Manuscripts, all the members of the Society were deceased.) Fräulein Sprengel didn't really exist, but the Manuscript itself has true antiquarian origins, traceable to Johann Falk and passed through the hands of Frances Barret, Eliphas Levi, and eventually to Mackenzie, Woodford and the S.R.I.A. (and the Society of Eight.)
- There really was a German Rosicrucian Order, sometimes referred to as the "Gold und Rosenkreutz", and it already had a branch in London, founded around 1810. "Sprengel" was a code word to acknowledge the GDs origin, in that it could have been a shorthand form of "Sprengelrecht", meaning "territorial jurisdiction". This order would have been ultra-secret, and there would be no documentable proof that it existed, and if it did, that the Golden Dawn was related to it.
- The Cipher Manuscript was legitimate, and the Golden Dawn is a valid offspring of an older Jewish order in Bavaria called Die Goldene Dämmerung, or Golden Twilight. This order was founded to allow German Jews to conduct Masonic-style lodges, since at the time Jews were banned from participation in Freemasonry.
In any case, no evidence has ever proven the existence of Fräulein Sprengel or her Lodge. (By Westcott's account, the other members of the German order supposedly objected to Fräulein Sprengel's chartering of the Isis-Urania Lodge, and all further communications were cut off after she died.) The Isis-Urania Charter was written and signed only by Westcott, Mathers and Woodman. There are letters by Mackenzie that indicate the Society of Eight existed, but nothing that describes what they actually taught or practiced. The symbolism and philosophy contained in the Manuscripts are not very different from the of high-degree Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, and Mackenzie and the members of the S.R.I.A. were capable enough esoteric scholars, with access to works on the Qabalah, Heremticism and Egyptology in Masonic libraries, and to have combined it all into the form followed by the Golden Dawn.
However, there is no conclusive evidence to prove any of the proposed origins of the Cipher Manuscript. Questions about the authenticity of the Cipher Manuscripts and the authority of the Charter contributed to the first great schism of the Order and the Manuscripts remain a mystery to this day.
References
- Gilbert, Robert A. Golden Dawn Scrapbook - The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order Weiser Books (1998) ISBN 1578630371
- Howe, Ellic. The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923. Samuel Weiser (1978). ISBN 0877283699.
- Runyon, Carroll Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscripts, (C.H.S., 1997) ISBN 0965488128