Initiatory Grades
Magister Templi (A A)
8=3
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Origin from 1907
Magister Templi, numbered 8=3 and Latin for Master of the Temple, is one of the highest grades of the A A, corresponding to the grade of the same name and number in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, from which the A A adapted its structure. The order's literature treats the grades at this level as a distinct order within its overall sequence. The order was founded in the early twentieth century by former Golden Dawn members.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodThe A A was founded in 1907 by Aleister Crowley and George Cecil Jones, and standard biographical treatments describe Crowley as having claimed to attain this grade in 1909, adapting its name and number directly from the Golden Dawn's own identically numbered Third Order grade. 2 Status
Status TodayHistorical; not practised continuously 2 Identity
PositionNumbered 8=3, the first grade of the A A's Third Order, the Order of the Silver Star, following the Second Order's Adeptus Exemptus. 1 Organisation
Governing BodyThe A A's Third Order, the Order of the Silver Star, which the order's own doctrine treats as directed by a transpersonal authority rather than an earthly governing body, the same doctrine of governance the order inherited from the Golden Dawn's own Third Order. 1 Meaning
Symbolic MeaningSourced to the subject's own accountNumbered 8=3, this grade's second numeral places it at Binah on the Tree of Life in the order's Golden-Dawn-derived Qabalistic correspondence system, traditionally described as the point beyond the Abyss where individual selfhood dissolves into the transpersonal. 3 Sources
Primary SourceSourced to the subject's own accountA A grade structure, adapted from the Golden Dawn. 3 Learn More
Magister Templi, One Of The A A's Highest Grades
Magister Templi, numbered 8=3 and Latin for Master of the Temple, is one of the highest grades of the A A, corresponding to the grade of the same name and number in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, from which the A A adapted its structure. The order's literature treats the grades at this level as a distinct order within its overall sequence, echoing the Golden Dawn's own division between its Second Order and the higher Third Order that the older system associated with its Secret Chiefs.
The A A was founded in the early twentieth century by former Golden Dawn members, chiefly Aleister Crowley, and it published its grade requirements, this one included, in The Equinox, the order's own periodical, making Magister Templi's place in the sequence a matter of public record in the order's own primary literature rather than something reconstructed from outside description.
Crowley's own later writing on the order's structure, including his widely read essay setting out the grade system's general shape, discusses the passage into Magister Templi as a significant conceptual threshold within the A A's teaching, a framing documented in the order's published output and in the scholarly literature on Crowley's life and organizations rather than asserted here independently of that record.
Magister Templi's Published Place At The A A's Summit
General scholarship on Aleister Crowley and the A A, including published biographical and historical studies of the order, discusses Magister Templi as one of the highest publicly documented grades in the order's sequence, its Tree of Life number and Latin title recorded in the order's own periodical, The Equinox, alongside the rest of the published curriculum.
Crowley's own widely read essay on the order's general grade structure discusses the passage into this level of the Third Order as a significant conceptual threshold, a characterization documented in the order's published output and in the secondary literature on Crowley's writing rather than reconstructed independently here.
The direct correspondence between Magister Templi in the A A and the Golden Dawn's own grade of the same name and number is treated in the published scholarship on both orders as one of the clearest points of structural continuity between Crowley's system and the order he had left.
General biographical scholarship on Crowley also documents that he considered this level of the order's Third Order among its most significant, a characterization drawn from Crowley's own published writing rather than reconstructed from private material.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The notation 8=3 sets Magister Templi on Binah in the scheme A A inherited from the Golden Dawn.
Attested In
One Star in Sight describes the Magister Templi grade in the terms Crowley chose to publish. What a holder of it was understood to have done is his account of it, not an independent one.
Derived From
Magister Templi keeps the Golden Dawn name and the 8=3 notation in the ladder Crowley built from the order he had been initiated into.
Sources
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