Over the years many myths have built up about one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers. Many of these have been created by those who wish to damn the Golden Dawn and its system of magic or by those who want to naively believe a bogus magical story about the Order and its founders.

In King Over The Water, Golden Dawn magician Nick Farrell paints a picture of the founders of the Golden Dawn becoming out of their depth as the Order began to create magicians. Rather than painting Mathers as an eccentric genius, Farrell sees him as an autocratic fantasist. He sees Mathers struggling to keep up as his students rapidly became better than him at the system he created, and shows how he was unable to raise his game to help the Order develop further.

In what will be a portrait of the problems that could befall any esoteric leader, Farrell (author of Gathering The Magic, a textbook on magical group dynamics) reveals how Mathers’ later rituals were an attempt to remove the magic from the system he created so that he could milk it for money.

Included will be previously unpublished papers from Mathers’ own version of the Golden Dawn, the Alpha et Omega, including the original Z documents, the full version of the Book of the Tomb (a key document for creating a Vault of the Adepts), the original method for the consecration of the sword, and much more.

King Over The Water is the prequel to Farrell’s groundbreaking exposé on the Alpha et Omega, Mathers’ Last Secret (2011, Rosicrucian Order of the Golden Dawn), and provides another look into the mind of a magician that helped develop the magic we use today.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Introduction by Nick Farrell

History of the King over the Water

Arise and Enter the Darknesss
The Light Shineth in Darkness
Quit the Night and Seek the Day
Fear is Failure
The Fading of the Will
The Death of the King over the Water

Golden Dawn Teachings and Commentaries

Introduction to this Section
The Book of the Tomb
Commentary on the Book of the Tomb
Ritual W
Commentary on Ritual W
Z Documents
Commentary on Z Documents
Notes On The Ritual Parts I & III (Unofficial)
Commentary on Z Document Notes
Mathers’ Method of Consecrating a Sword
Commentary on Sword Consecration

Afterward: The Search for the Quintessence

“King over the Water presents an out of the box view of MacGregor Mathers. Nick Farrell approaches decisive elements of Golden Dawn history in a fresh new look with some of the latest research available on the Order’s history, which challenges elements of Ellic Howe’s original work as to the origin of the Golden Dawn ciphers. This book is a thought provoking attempt at trying to unravel the century old tradition as to the origins of the Golden Dawn.”

— Pat Zalewski, author of Golden Dawn Rituals and Commentaries
 
“The Golden Dawn with its turbulent history and many off-shoots was and is the most influential magical order of the late 19th through, now, the early 21st centuries. Nick Farrell, a magician in the Golden Dawn tradition, has once again made available historical material on Samuel L. Mathers and his later organization, the Alpha et Omega; documenting the early rise of this order in 1900 through its closure at the outbreak of World War II. The history, magical workings, and teachings of this long neglected Golden Dawn off-shoot are now made available for a new generation of Golden Dawn students to study, use, and learn from.”
— Samuel Scarborough, Senior Adept of the Ordo Stella Matutina
 
“Nick has produced an enjoyable narrative of the history of the Order of the Golden Dawn that reveals the mettle of the members involved. There are many interesting nuances of this Order and its members that are now revealed for the first time. Nick can be proud of this book.”
— Darcy Küntz, editor of the revised and corrected Collectanea Hermetica.
 
“As a history of the early days of Golden Dawn, and a biography of Mathers, this book is a welcome addition.” [Read the full review]
— Morgan Drake Eckstein, Adept and Archive Officer of Bast Temple