Long time champion of the Golden Dawn, Nick Farrell has finally admitted that the system is broken and can’t be fixed.
In a surprise announcement, Farrell announced that his Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea can no longer be considered a traditional Golden Dawn group, although it will continue to use rituals and teachings.
In a Facebook interview with Watchers of the Dawn, Farrell said that the Golden Dawn egregore was blighted with all sorts of “astral parasites” and had been doing its best to kill itself.
“If you are in a group which claims that it is Golden Dawn, you open yourself to all the problems suffered by the original order,” Farrell said.
He thinks that the original Golden Dawn egregore was a quasi-masonic order that admitted women and it had problems adapting to the magical techniques which were bought in by Mathers.
“Having your order head being an ego crazed loon also harms the egregore, as does having an order that rises against its leadership or encourages political knifings… The Golden Dawn had all these problems and will encourage them to happen again and again,” Farrell added.
Now if you say “I am Golden Dawn” you open yourself to all those anti-magical, megalomaniacal problems. But if you try to do something new then the egregore will fall on you like a free-falling elephant, he said.
“The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, particularly in is second order is more experimental, so we have been getting in the neck from that egregore and its antics are distracting,” he said.
Farrell was dismissive of those who claimed that they needed a connection to the Golden Dawn because of the mystical power of a tradition.
“When you look at the Golden Dawn history, those groups that have been the most successful have been those who have done their best to distance themselves from its egregore. Felkin was a case in point. He wired his Whare Ra Order to the Rosicrucian current in Europe and bypassed the toxic Golden Dawn order completely.”
This gave Felkin the ability to do what he liked and not be bound by rules set by the old egregore, he said.
“This is what we have done with the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea… we have our own link to the past currents of the Golden Dawn which does not feature the Order itself. We use its rituals, and all its teachings, but we have our own vision about how these are supposed to play out.”
The last straw was the universal adoption in the mass media of the name “Golden Dawn” by the Greek Fascist movement.
“Association with a hate group on an international scale does more damage to the Golden Dawn than the Horos Scandle… Who wants your magic order sitting on Google ranking next to neo-nazis?”
Already the confusion between the name Golden Dawn and the Greek Nazis has happened. One mentally ill person listed all the occult golden dawn members as being organizers of the Far Right in Europe and the US, he said.
“That cannot help but destroy any good that the Golden Dawn can be associated with. It is reaching a point where running a “golden dawn” group is like swimming in a public pool full of floating turds…. You end up trying to avoid them all the time rather than getting on with the business of swimming.”
The advantages of saying “I am a member of a Golden Dawn group” of people knowing where you are coming from, are now eclipsed by those who think you are “neo-nazi” or connected with the Golden Dawn in-fighting or other stuff.
Anyway a group should not need to “look to the past for any particular knowledge or security, but to its future”.
Farrell said it was better to pour new wine into new skins and be more secure in the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea’s independence and ability to move in its own direction.
“We have basically grown up, and don’t need that name any more, ” he concluded.
Watcher of the Dawn 
This does not surprise me at all. Some months ago I took the descision to change all the keywords on the website that associated the Hermetic Order of the Temple of Starlight with the GD. For three reasons. First of all the ongoing flame wars, The second reason are the developments in Greece.
You know, the Freemasons have put up with being associated with all kinds of nasty political and religious movements literally for centuries, and they’ve never thought of changing their name. The USA even had the “Anti-Masonic Party”, a legitimate political party that won elections!
So all the upright citizens of the Golden Dawn-o-sphere are all going to run off and leave the Golden Dawn legacy to the tender mercies of American cult leaders and Greek fascists? Or more to the point, leaving it to Chic Cicero to defend that legacy against the cult leaders and fascists alone.
You all realise that means you are conceding that the cult leaders and fascists have won, don’t you?
I have long since said that the C19th organized Masonic model for occult groups was looking very dated. Furthermore any idiot with a piece of paper (forged or not seemingly) can set themselves as a Golden Dawn Pope, and accept tribute and worship from the gullible (oops, that should read “seekers”).
As Nick Farrell remarks; “It is reaching a point where running a “golden dawn” group is like swimming in a public pool full of floating turds…. You end up trying to avoid them all the time rather than getting on with the business of swimming.”
For many years past I have been questioning the ‘egregore’ notion that is a particular feature of Golden Dawn groups. Institutionalized schisms regularly occur throughout its entire history for reasons related both to its Masonic structural origins combined with the ego-maniacal tendencies of an unusually high proportion of its leaders. More evidence and discussion of this in my forthcoming Complete Book of Enochian Chess.
To clarify where I see things going currently; Enochian Chess is also
about to leave the Golden Dawn (strictly defined). The game system is at a stage where it can achieves critical velocity under its own steam and can break free of the narrowest constraints of its Victorian past. I want it to provide a ‘refuge’ for lost (or would be) Golden Dawners, who can garnish all of the knowledge and occult skills that they are ever likely to need without having to submit to command of any Group or leader. Liberation from subscriptions, no vows of loyalty and obedience to a group egregore or whatnot.
A major step towards this aim was publication of Tarot of the Four Worlds, a few years ago now. The importance of these Ptolemaic era ‘pagan’ original tarot triumphs is now becoming clearer to more and more people. Dominance over the ‘magickal landscape’ by Christian Kabbalists and the very lately concocted (mid-C19th) Waite-Levi tarot is starting to be loosened. There is increasing take up of T4W use by divinationists, as demonstrated to me by feedback received. But the power of using T4Worlds (major) and T4Winds (1614 four sets of illustrated minor arcana) multiplies exponentially when using them with the four Enochian Chess boards.
I think this is a major step forward – things have to evolve, grow and change. I wish the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea all the best on their wonderful journey into fresh territory. This is how magic survives and grows, and it will be interesting to see how this all evolves.
Josephine McCarthy