Post #26. The Battle of Blythe Road: The Magical Civil War That Destroyed the Golden Dawn
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The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, for all its brilliance and influence, was a fragile and volatile organisation. Its members were brilliant, ambitious, and often deeply eccentric individuals, and its hierarchical structure was a breeding ground for jealousy, power struggles, and schism. In 1900, less than twelve years after its founding, the order would be torn apart by a magical civil war, a bitter and often bizarre conflict that would pit the order’s London adepts, led by the poet W.B. Yeats, against its flamboyant and rebellious leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, and his fearsome new champion, the young Aleister Crowley.
The Seeds of Rebellion: Mathers’ Autocracy
The conflict had been brewing for years. Mathers, who had become the sole leader of the order after the death of Woodman and the resignation of Westcott, had moved to Paris and was ruling the order from afar. His leadership style became increasingly autocratic and erratic. He demanded absolute obedience from the members, and he made increasingly grandiose claims about his own magical authority, claiming to be in sole contact with the Secret Chiefs.
The London adepts, who were doing the practical work of running the order and initiating new members, grew resentful of Mathers’ long-distance tyranny. They questioned his authority and doubted the reality of his contact with the Secret Chiefs. A committee was formed, led by the actress Florence Farr, to investigate the origins of the order and the legitimacy of Mathers’ rule.
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The Arrival of Aleister Crowley: The Magical Anarchist
Into this tense and volatile situation stepped the young Aleister Crowley. A brilliant, wealthy, and deeply unconventional Cambridge undergraduate, Crowley had joined the Golden Dawn in 1898 and had risen through the grades of the Outer Order with unprecedented speed. He was a gifted magician, but he was also an anarchist, a rebel, and a man who delighted in breaking taboos.
Crowley became a devoted disciple of Mathers, seeing in him the powerful magical master he had been searching for. Mathers, in turn, saw in Crowley a powerful new weapon, a magical enforcer who could help him to reassert his authority over the rebellious London adepts.
When the London temple refused to initiate Crowley into the Inner Order, citing his libertine lifestyle and his suspected homosexual activities, Crowley went to Paris, where he was initiated directly by Mathers. This was a direct challenge to the authority of the London adepts, a declaration of war.
The Battle of Blythe Road: A Magical Showdown
Mathers, with Crowley as his emissary, decided to make his move. He sent Crowley to London to seize the temple and its magical property. What followed was the bizarre and legendary “Battle of Blythe Road,” named after the location of the London temple.
Crowley, dressed in full Highland costume and wearing a black mask, attempted to storm the temple. He was met at the door by W.B. Yeats and other members of the London temple, who had been warned of his coming. A magical battle ensued. Crowley is said to have used Enochian spells and to have summoned a host of demonic forces. Yeats and his allies responded with their own banishing rituals and by calling on the power of the archangels.
In the end, the battle was decided not by magical power, but by the timely intervention of the London police, who were called by the landlord. Crowley was ignominiously ejected from the premises. The rebellion had succeeded. Mathers’ authority was broken, and the Golden Dawn, as a unified organisation, was effectively destroyed.
The Aftermath: A Fractured Legacy
The schism of 1900 shattered the Golden Dawn into a dozen competing factions. Mathers continued to run his own version of the order, the Alpha et Omega. A.E. Waite, a Christian mystic and a member of the London temple, formed his own, more mystically inclined version. And a group of the London adepts, including Yeats, formed the Stella Matutina.
But the original genius of the order, its powerful synthesis of different traditions and its rigorous, systematic approach to magical training, was lost. The Golden Dawn, which had promised to be the foundation of a new magical age, had been destroyed by the very human failings of its members: their pride, their ambition, and their inability to live up to the high ideals of the magic they practised.
And what of Crowley? The schism was a turning point for him. He had lost his faith in Mathers and in the Golden Dawn system. He would now set out on his own to forge his own new system of magic, a system that would be even more radical, more dangerous, and more influential than that of the Golden Dawn. The magical civil war was over, but a new and more terrible magical revolution was about to begin.
In our next post, we will follow the journey of Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast 666, as he receives a new revelation, The Book of the Law, and ushers in the new magical aeon of Horus.
The greatest enemy of any magical order is its own members. Follow the Secret City series.
Join us as we continue to uncover the secrets of the Secret City.
Solomon Jones (Author/Researcher)
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