Florence Beatrice Farr
(1860-1917)
Sapientia Sapienti Dono Data, "Wisdom is a gift given to the Wise", was Florence Farr's Magical Motto when she was initiated into the Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. She dedicated herself to becoming worthy of her motto by actually making of her physical self a sanctuary, a Temple to receive the spirits of the Gods. She saw wisdom as the Serpent, tempting one to experience the dualities of life. Unity of being is the refining and reconciling of duality. Magical Will through desire, intuition, and cleansed of material illusion gives one a clear perspective and the Wisdom of the Past, Present and Future.
Florence father, a doctor and one of England's first hygienists, was a personal friend of Florence Nightingale and he named his youngest daughter for her. At 19, Florence, along with some friends, posed for Sir Edward Burne-Jones' Pre-Raphaelite painting, "The Golden Stairs" (currently at London's Tate Gallery.)
Florence attended Queen's College, the first woman's college in England. After graduating she took a teaching position for a brief period. With her beautiful speaking voice, her aspirations then turned to the stage. She enjoyed modest success, but within two years she met and married a fellow actor and quickly discovered (to her horror) the peculiar tedium and claustrophobia of married life for a Victorian woman. The marriage did not last. In1890 when Florence moved in with her sister at Bedford Park, a Bohemian center for intellectuals and artistic free-thinkers, discussing and writing about Art and Politics with women on equal standing with men. It was here, under a full moon, that John Todhunter (a future member of the Golden Dawn) put on his play, A Sicilian Idyll with Florence as the Priestess Amaryllis, who invokes the Moon Goddess Selene to destroy her faithless lover. Both George Bernard Shaw and William Butler Yeats were in attendance, and both fell in love with her starling beauty, large expressive eyes, crescent eyebrows, and luminous smile.
G. B. Shaw, a true Pygmalion, wanted to mold her into his vision of the " modern woman" and have her become the great actress for his plays. To Yeats, she was a Poetic Muse, for only her resonant voice was capable of reciting his poetry. But she proved a reluctant Muse, for she would not be dominated by any man again. In fact, it was Florence, with Annie Horniman's financial aid, that gave both writers their first opportunity to produce stage plays. Naturally, they both wrote the leading parts for Florence.
The three would continue their affairs, friendships and artistic endeavors. In Yeats' play, "The Countess Cathleen," he had Florence portrays Aleel, a minstrel possessing the "sight" to peer into the Spirit world. She sang her lines in verse while playing her psaltery (hand harp). Shaw wrote "Arms And The Man" where Florence as the vivacious maid servant, Louka, steals the hero from play's female lead. Florence was becoming a successful actress on her own, being the first actress in England to act in Ibsen plays. But like teaching, once she joined the Golden Dawn, she lost interest in becoming the great actress Shaw and Yeats envisioned.
Shaw detested her "irrational interest" in Magic and mocked her and her Egyptology in his play Caesar And Cleopatra. Cleopatra's character (evidently inspired by Florence) calls herself a "modern woman", then while strumming a Psaltery Shaw has her say , "When I was foolish, I did what I liked. Now that Caesar (A male and "God" no less) has made me Wise, I do what must be done and have no time to tend to myself. This is not happiness, but it is greatest." He thought her Golden Dawn work was all pomposity.
It is obvious from Aleister Crowley's writings that he was also very much enamored of Florence. For his vision of Hypatia Gay in "At the Fork of the Road" or Soror Cybele in Moonchild, she was definitely his ideal of a Magical High Priestess, but unfortunately he would never encounter her like again.
Florence joined the Golden Dawn in July 1890 as its 88th member. She quickly progressed through the grades, and on the Winter Solstice of 1891 was the second member to be initiated through the 5=6 Ritual, a powerful night to experience death and rebirth. The following year, she was elevated to Praemonstratrix of the Order where she refined the working of the Golden Dawn's rituals. W. B. Yeats stated that no one could evoke in rituals the kind of shivers that Florence did by her trained and commanding voice.
She focused her esoteric work on Egyptology, and was also quite adept at the Enochian system and the I Ching. But it was skrying in the spirit vision that was her forte, especially when skyring in the Golden Dawn's Vault. It was through her skrying that Florence contacted a Priestess of the Temple of Amon-at-Thebes, named NEM KHEFT KA. Mathers verified this entity as a secret chief, encouraging Florence to do further skrying to acquire the arcane rites of this ancient Mystic Order. This led to the famous invocation of Taphthartharath to physical appearance with fellow Adept Allen Bennett. While a Golden Dawn Magician invokes the Divine forces with his Will and magical weapons, Florence, on the other hand, made of herself the conduit to actually become Thoth, then as Thoth invoked the mercurial spirit of Taphthartharath. This procedure, not unlike the practice among voudon houngans being mounted by their deities, can be dangerous to the human host if not properly executed, though it appears in Florence's case the work was a success.
Florence was a prolific writer. She wrote two novels based on her life experiences, and several articles for the Occult Review, the Theosophical Review and The New Age. Her book Music of Speech is about her and Yeats' approach of applying musical notes to poetry for recitals, an art she no doubt applied to her Magical work. For the Golden Dawn she wrote several of the Flying Rolls from "Will Power" and "Hermetic Love", to "Traveling in the Spirit Vision." For Westcott's Collectanea Hermetica, she commented on a couple of alchemical texts. Her The Way of Wisdom: Being an Investigation of the Meaning of the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet Considered as a Remnant of Chaldean Wisdom, is exactly that, but also relates the Hebrew Letters to Buddhist and Theosophical concepts.
Also written for the Collectanea Hermetica, but quite able to stand on its own, is "Egyptian Magic." Based on Egyptian texts she studied at the British Museum, Florence showed the parallels between Egyptian magic and the Hermetic, Kabbalistic, Alchemical and Rosicrucian Works. She used the Egyptian texts to serve as models for ritual invocations of God-forms and symbols to awaken the dormant faculties of human nature towards the attainment of Osiris (perfection.)
As Praemonstratrix, her duties were to teach and instruct the Outer Order. With the Order rapidly expanding, she began easing up on the grade advancement examinations by changing them from written to oral. She felt Magical understanding was more important than memorization. Furthermore, she was impatient to advance gifted students, so that as Adepts they could join her personal inner Order group called "The Sphere" which was specializing in skrying work such as projecting the Tree of Life over the City of London. Changing the Order's testing system was a recipe for disaster, for what made the Golden Dawn Magical system so potent was its disciplined, formalized training upward through the elemental grades.
When Westcott resigned in 1897, Florence Farr became the Chief Adept in Anglia of the Golden Dawn. Instead of developing her Magical base, she was thrust into the familiar Order intrigues. And despite his magical talent and enthusiasm, she denied Aleister Crowley his 5=6 advancement for "sex-intemperance" which opened a further riff between Mathers and the London Temple. Then came the Horos scandal, and Florence was driven to resign.
Mathers rejected her resignation, but in the same letter stated that Westcott has forged the Fraulein Sprengel correspondence (but not the Cipher Manuscripts which are the basis for the Order initatory rituals). Was it Mathers' way to test her loyalty and oath of silence, or was his intent was to keep her from resigning as Chief Adept of the London Temple?
Unfortunately, Florence assumed the worse. Was the Order was based on fraud? She formed a committee of Adepts to investigate. Westcott denied Mathers' claim, promising to produce the Sprengel letters, but strangely never did. From Paris, Mathers annulled the committee. Then Crowley, claiming Mathers' authority, made his famous attempt to seize the Vault at 36 Blythe Road. This was the last straw, and the committee expelled Mathers. They then attempted to frame a new constitution for the Order wherein all Second Order examinations and teachings were eliminated, and anyone could be initiated to 5=6 Grade without going through the Outer Order.
Florence was finding it impossible to deal with the pretty bickering within her beloved Order. Florence must have realized that all this chaos began with her act of revealing private information in Mathers' letter. It was not the Magical current that was breaking up the Golden Dawn, but politics. In January of 1902, Florence severed all her ties to the Golden Dawn.
As a last Magical work, Florence co-wrote and produced two Egyptian plays, The Beloved of Hathor, and Shrine of the Golden Hawk. Modeled on Mathers' Rites of Isis, the first deals with the battle between earthly love and spiritual wisdom, and the reconciliation between them; the second play portrays a magical act of creating a Talisman of Heru, wherein the Seeker, portrayed by Florence, becomes the actual living Talisman, so as to recieve the gift of Wisdom from the Wise Heru.
In the years after the disintegration of the Golden Dawn, Florence continued her acting career. She toured America in 1907, doing poetry recitals with her psaltery. Both Yeats and Shaw believed she could have achieved greatness, but by 1912, her acting career was fading. Returning to her original avocation, she took a teaching position in Ceylon. Within a few years she was diagnosed with breast cancer; two months later she passed away. She was cremated and her ashes scattered in a sacred river.