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The Book
of the
Seniors
A Magickal Record
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By Benjamin Rowe
The Book of the Seniors
copyright 1987, 1999 by Benjamin Rowe
All rights reserved.
Typeset in Adobe ‘Minion’
Introduction
Introduction
This book is part of the record of an extended magickal working involving the
Tablet of Earth from John Dee’s Enochian magickal system. This section presents
the results of a series of invocations of the Seniors from that Tablet. The record is
complete and is presented exactly as it was received at the time of the invocations,
without editing.
The invoking names of the Seniors are derived from the Great Central Cross of
the Tablet by reading outwards horizontally and vertically from the two centermost
squares of the Tablet. In the Golden Dawn’s theory of the Enochian system, they
represent the forces of the planets manifesting within the element, and are consid-
ered to be Briatic in nature. With the Elemental King, who represents the Sun and is
a link between the Briatic and the Yetziratic levels of the Tablet, they bind together
all the forces within the Tablet.
Additionally, the Seniors are said to provide knowledge specifically concerning
“human affairs”, and the present record confirms that in the broadest sense. On
another level (and unknown to me at the time of the operations) the
24
Seniors in
the four Tablets correlate with the
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Elders mentioned in the Revelation of St. John
the Divine. In this latter case, they relate to the zodiac signs, presumably two for
each sign. And again, the record would seem to support this attribution.
A somewhat different method of operation is used here than in the previous
invocations of the series that were described in
Touring the Earth Tablet.
In that
work, each of the “Kerubic” squares of the Tablet was examined individually. The
visions were deliberately forced into a highly visual and symbolic form, along the
lines set down in the Golden Dawn's rules for astral workings. While these restric-
tions made it easy to establish the validity and consistency of the visions, it also
forced the information given by the Kerubic forces into an extremely cumbersome
and hard to read form.
In the current series, no effort has been made to make the visions conform to the
baroque style touted by the Golden Dawn. Rather, the Seniors were allowed to
present themselves in their own manner, except for a brief presentation of a teles-
matic image as a check of validity. Attempting to examine each square individually
would have been much too cumbersome. The result has been much more direct and
readable than in the previous case.
Despite the looser form, the results of these invocations are entirely consistent
with the previous invocations of the working. Taken together, they present a devel-
oping system of symbolism related to the planet Earth, the various modes of mag-
ickal initiation, and man's place on Earth and in the universe.
The story presented by the Seniors is a history of the spiritual development of
man on Earth, as viewed by the being who is the life of the Earth and those
appointed to direct that development. The main characters are those beings whose
actions are the root of the mythos of the gods Set and Horus, and the plot describes
their conflicts as they contended for control of man's evolution over eighty million
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The Book of the Seniors
years. With the earlier works in this series, it also presents a “reconstruction” of the
original mythos of Set, from before the time when priests of Horus and Osiris
demolished his temples and turned him into a devil-god for their own forms of reli-
gion.
This mythos is not a step backward in time, but a re-formulation in terms of the
incoming energies of this present day, when the equinox is moving into the constel-
lation of Aquarius. The philosophy presented is entirely consistent with the basic
tenets of Thelema as originally stated in
Liber AL vel Legis,
and those later elabora-
tions presented by C.S. Jones (Frater Achad).
The energies of the sign of Aquarius are vastly different from the energies of the
previous aeon, which was under the sign of Pisces. The Piscean age was character-
ized by highly structured, imposed systems of religion and magick, presented
through the work of rigid hierarchical organizations. In that age, the individual was
expected to subordinate himself to the work and symbolism of the group, and to
accept what was given to him on faith. Man was seen as being at the bottom of the
spiritual hierarchy, and was therefore subordinate to all of the spiritual forces. He
could only contact them through faith and supplication, in effect begging them for a
bit of wisdom.
The Aquarian energies, on the other hand, are extremely individualistic. The rul-
ing planet, Uranus, and the exalted planet, Mercury, show that in this new time
individuals can achieve magickal and spiritual success entirely through their own
efforts, without the aid of any outside force. The results of their work will be pro-
portional to the effort they put into it. Where Mercury, knowledge, was in its detri-
ment in Pisces, here it is at its height. Thus knowing and self-will, and not
submission and faith, are now to be the key to initiation.
Under the Aquarian energies, each man contributes to the group work by doing
his own work and discovering his own Will, without reference to the work of others.
The links between the work of one person and another will come naturally, as a
consequence of the internal connections that exist between all things, and not as an
externally-imposed set of formulae. The connections mentioned above are one
example of this principle. No doubt many more examples will arise in coming years.
Following this principle, I would like to encourage the reader to examine this
work and all such works with a critical eye, to not accept it as literally true, and not
accept it as symbolic truth unless it
fits
your own views of the spirit. Perhaps
another way is better for you. There is more than enough room for any number of
views.
Before concluding, a few explanatory remarks might be in order.
Where reference to the cabalistic Tree of Life is made in this work, it is always to
the revised version discovered and presented by Frater Achad. I have personally
found this form of the Tree to be much more productive than the old G.D. version.
The extended working of which this paper is a part has demonstrated that it is not
merely a curiousity, but a workable and very effective system of symbolism, at least
the equal of the older version of the Tree. But the use of this alternate system should
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Introduction
not deter users of the older Tree from reading this book. The essential aspects of the
work are not dependent on the Tree at all, and can be applied to many different sys-
tems.
It seems appropriate to provide the readers with a minimum sketch of the sym-
bolic basis of the narrative, so that they might have some clues to its occult interpre-
tation.
The planetary symbolism of the Seniors themselves appears only on a very super-
ficial
level, and has little to do with the content of their story. The plot of the story
follows the sequence of the zodiac signs in precessional order, starting with the sign
of Pisces, showing the Earth and her Lunar twin as the two
fishes.
Further develop-
ment follows through Aquarius and the other signs until it ends in Aries, with a
minor epilogue not related to the signs. The portion concerning the Earth-Spirit
and the portion concerning the character Set follow parallel but separate threads
until they meet in the sign of Scorpio, from which point the story goes forward in a
single plotline. All the major plot elements relate in some way to the
astrological
(as
opposed to the cabalistic) attributes of the signs.
The main characters represent the elements of the modified INRI or IRNI for-
mula, presented in detail in the paper titled
Set / Horus
and several of my other
papers. (The formula’s appearance here is in fact the
first
clue I received as to the
modified formula’s existence.) Briefly, the Earth herself represents the
first
and last
“I” of the formula, corresponding to the astrological signs Taurus and Aquarius
respectively. This dual characterization shows her as both a celestial being in her
own right (Aquarius = “The Star”) and as the nurturing mother (Taurus, ruled by
Venus and the Moon) within whose “womb” and at whose behest most of the
action takes place.
The protagonist, Set, corresponds to the “N” of IRNI, and his described charac-
ter relates closely to that sign, its traditional ruler Mars, and its exalted planet Ura-
nus. The sign's modern ruler, Pluto, appears only as an undercurrent and in the
Pisces phase of Set's plotline. Set's opposite number, Horus, represents the “R” of
INRI, corresponding to Sol and its sign Leo.
There is also the question of identities to be considered. The reader might won-
der, as he examines this work, just who the Seniors are speaking to. It would be
absurd to think that the scribe, the fellow whose name appears in the copyright
notice, is the one who did all the things the Seniors attribute to the one they speak
to. He is all too human, very much a child of his times, and more than a little bit of
a fool. But if not him, then who?
In the words of the Seniors, the scribe is part of a tripartite being, a “man who is
a mage who is a god”. As a general rule, when the
first
person singular is used in this
work, it is a blend of the scribe and the mage, in varying proportions, who speaks.
The distinction between them is never too clear to the scribe, and it is becoming less
clear as this working progresses. But the more doubtful and uncertain the “I” who
speaks appears, the greater the proportion of the scribe in the mixture.
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