THE ATLAS OF THE ORDER THAT TOOK

S. L. MacGregor Mathers

Mathers

nature

The Order's intellectual engine: translator, ritualist, and self-invented Highland aristocrat. He expanded the Cipher Manuscripts' sketches into a complete working system, wrote most of the Second Order material, and quarrelled with nearly everyone.

His The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887) is the foundation text — and it is a translation of Knorr's Latin, which he concedes in his own preface. The single most consequential act of transmission in the English-speaking tradition, performed at one remove from the language.

The translation is principally taken from the Latin version of Knorr von Rosenroth… especially whenever the Latin rendering seemed unreliable.

rhymes with

sephirahgevurah

whyGevurah is form, severity, boundary and the drawing of hard lines — Mathers' gift and the cause of every schism he was in.