Introduction

Mogg Morgan
For a few months back in the early part of 20081 worked with a small group of
local Oxford occultists using some themes drawn from the Shadow Tarot. I’m
told this might be rather a foolhardy approach to the tradition but those who
know me won’t be too surprised. The work was done as part of a training group
for the Oxford Golden Dawn Occult Society, which is a small occult sodality
founded in the 1980s as an homage to the original but now sadly defunct Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. This small group has since morphed into the
Khemetic Order of the Golden Dawn but that’s another story.

From my first involvement with Golden Dawn magickin the 1980s, I felt called
to the Ancient Egyptian god Seth. This was a natural enough progression from
my initiation into Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian recension of the Ordo Templi
Orientis, recently rebranded as The Typhonian Order. Of the many important
books written by the late Kenneth Grant, Nightside of Eden is one of the most
intriguing. It is in effect an extended commentary on Aleister Crowley’s Uber
231, one of the most enigmatic of his many publications. This short Liber is is
published in The Holy Books of Thelema, (1988) Crowley, Aleister, edited by
Hymenaeus Alpha [Grady McMurtry] Weiser NY.

The text is prefaced by an enigmatic diagram showing two sets of signs, the left
hand corresponding to the schema of twenty-two paths on the Golden Dawn
Tree of Life. Those on the right, a duplicate set and usually taken to correspond
to “nightside” or “Qliphotic” aspect of the Tree of Life. It is this later array
that has received the most attention and is the subject of Kenneth Grant’s
extended “Nightside of Eden” commentary. The accompanying text is a series
of 22 short epigrammes. For example “0. A, the heart of IAO, dwelleth in
ecstasy in the secret place of the thunders. Between Asar [Osiris] and Asi [Isis]
he abideth in joy.” The right hand array has nothing as obvious, merely a list of
“The Genii of the 22 scales of the Serpent and of the Qliphoth”. The Qliphoth
is a Hebrew word meaning “revenant” or “shell” and is therefore taken to mean