REVEALED: Israel Regardie's Rose+Cross Lamen

(EU OHIM reg. 000063925)

by Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn®

Imperator David Griffin

Israel Regardie

In the late 1970's Israel Regardie, together with Cris Monnastre (his primary disciple) performed a long series of magickal rituals with the intention of causing a Golden Dawn resurgence. Considering the flourishing Golden Dawn today, this was clearly one of the most influential, successful magickal workings in modern history. Cris Monnastre, one of only two individuals ever initiated by Israel Regardie into the Golden Dawn's Inner Order, was my first initiator as well. When she decided to retire from the Golden Dawn in 1994, Cris Monnastre gifted all of Regardie's magickal tools to me personally, to empower me in leading the Golden Dawn into the 21st Century.

As important as Israel Regardie's personal magickal weapons are in and of themselves, the crown jewel of the Regardie collection is today not a magickal tool created by Regardie himself, but rather a Rose+Cross lamen gifted to Regardie by Alpha Omega Adept, Elsa Barker (1869–1954), a direct magical link to Golden Dawn founder, S.L. MacGregor Mathers.

Israel Regardie's Rose Cross Lamen
(Gifted to Regardie by MacGregor Mathers Envoy, Elsa Barker)

Elsa Barker

Elsa Barker was instrumental in bringing the Golden Dawn to America, as she frequently carried documents and messages back and forth between S.L. MacGregor Mathers in Paris and the Alpha Omega temples flourishing in America. 

Barker was born in Leicester, Vermont and became an American novelist and poet. Barker lived most of her adult life in New York City. From 1910 to 1914, she lived in Paris, where she was initiated in S.L. MacGregor Mathers’ Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega. As Barker frequently traveled between Paris and the USA, Elsa Barker became MacGregor Mathers’ emissary to the American temples of the A.O. 

S.L. Macgregor Mathers

The minute book of Mathers' Ahathoor temple mentions that, on July 3, 1911, just prior to Elsa Barker’s return to the USA, Mathers had received applications from 9 members to form yet another new temple, Neith Temple No. 10 in America.

Barker produced through automatic writing the scripts for Letters from a Living Dead Man (1914), War Letters from the Living Dead Man (1915), and Last Letters from a Living Dead Man (1919). These remarkable communications attracted much attention in England, where they were first published. At the time the scripts were produced, Elsa Barker was new to automatic writing, and was also unaware that the communicator (subsequently identified as David P. Hatch, a Los Angeles lawyer), who signed the communications "X," had passed away. These letters record the impressions of an intelligent traveler in a strange country, his mistakes, prejudices, ideals, and new insights.

Elsa Barker's other publications include The Son of Mary Bethel (1909), The Frozen Grail & Other Poems (1910), Stories from the New Testament for Children (1911), The Body of Love (1912), Fielding Sargent (1922), The Cobra Candlestick (1928), The C.I.D. of Dexter Drake (1929), and The Redman Cave Murder (1930). Barker died August 31, 1954. 

Her rose-cross remains today a crown jewel in Mather's Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega, and our outer order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. At all official Inner Order functions, it is with great pride that I wear at all Golden Dawn Inner Order functions.

(EU OHIM reg. 000063925)

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn®

Imperator David Griffin

Wearing Israel Regardie's Rose Cross Lamen

(EU OHIM reg 000063925)

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn®

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